Related Content
•
2019 Special Awards Annoucements and Features
•
#CoSIDA19 Convention Home
•
Past Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients
Liz Abel – University of Utah, Senior Associate Athletics Director for Communications
2019 CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
by Mike Lageschulte, University of Utah Athletics Special Projects
Like so many college athletes at the end of their careers,
Liz Abel was faced with an unfamiliar and undesirable task: figuring out what to do next.
After years of spending countless hours in the gym, having goals to work toward and wins to celebrate with best friends and teammates, the time had come for the three-year basketball letter winner at the University of Idaho to call it a career.
As a third-team CoSIDA Academic All-American, owner of the highest cumulative GPA among Idaho’s senior athletes, and the winner of the school’s Outstanding Journalism Graduate award in 1982, Abel had the credentials she needed to go any number of places.
However, in her heart, she knew that she didn’t want to leave athletics. Abel started applying for various assistant basketball coaching jobs and asked for some help from her former head coach, Tara VanDerveer, who spent two years with the Vandals from 1978-80 before moving on to Ohio State and eventually Stanford.
“When I called Tara, she told me, ‘You don’t want to be a coach. Don’t you want to do something with your writing skills?’ I explained to her that I had been looking at a couple of newspaper jobs but wasn’t getting a lot of interest,” Abel recalled.
“That’s when Tara asked if I would be interested in becoming an SID. I had written a couple of feature stories for the game programs at Idaho, but I really didn’t know much about what SIDs did. After Tara explained it to me a little more, I told her that I would be interested. She said she would make a few phone calls. The next thing I know, Tara called me back and said that she had gotten me an internship at Missouri.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Abel interned at Missouri in 1982-83 under Dru Hancock, Bob Brendel and Bill Callahan. That experience helped Abel land her first full-time job at the University of Utah in 1983 as the assistant sports information director. She received subsequent promotions before earning her current title of senior associate athletics director in 2011.
Liz Abel with former University of Utah Director of Athletics Chris Hill in 2017.
In the fall of 1989, Abel became a pioneer in the media relations field when Utah athletics director Chris Hill tabbed her to be one of the first female football SIDs in the country.
“With Chris Hill as my staunchest supporter, I never let any roadblocks—which were most prevalent early on—get in my way or bother me. I never really thought about my gender being an obstacle,” Abel explained. “In some ways, it made me a better SID because I had to work harder than the men to prove that a woman could handle football media relations. I never complained or gave up.
“Every single day, I have tried to get better, be more inclusive and engaged, and open to new ideas. I confess I have done virtually no networking in my career, instead preferring to try and out-think, out-work and out-care everyone else and see where it took me. I am especially proud that our football SID staff was entirely female for the past two years with Brooke Frederickson and Jordie Lindley assisting me. I am almost certain that has never happened at an FBS school.”
In her current role, the Bowling Green, Ohio, native oversees the public relations, publicity, new media and video divisions for Utah Athletics. In addition to football, she has been the primary media contact for women’s gymnastics. She also served in the same capacity for the women’s basketball, volleyball, softball and ski teams earlier in her career.
That will all come to an end in late July, when Abel retires from the U. and moves on to the next chapter of her life.
“I never intended to make sports information a lifetime career, but it fit my personality, high energy level and strengths perfectly. Every day has been an adventure with new challenges and learning opportunities,” Abel said.
“Really, the biggest reason I stayed in it for 36 years were the amazing opportunities offered by my athletic director for 31 of those years, Dr. Chris Hill. Chris was a brilliant visionary who encouraged everyone in the department to play a role in moving us forward. He supported and encouraged creativity, innovation, hard work and passion. I never felt I had a ceiling with Chris as my boss. The sky was the limit. He mentored me and made me a part of his decision-making process on pretty much every major event. It made this job endlessly exciting and rewarding.”
Abel and her department received the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) Super 11 Award in 2009 and 2010 as one of the best 11 sports information departments in NCAA FBS football. The Greater Salt Lake chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) awarded Abel the Golden Spike Award for “Communicator of the Year” in the state of Utah in 2014.
She has been named the Region Gymnastics Administrator of the Year seven times by the National Association for Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches, and won a number of national awards for her sport publications, including two “Best in the Nation” and four second-place designations for her gymnastics media guides.
In addition to all of the personal accolades, Abel’s storied career has been filled with some of the greatest moments in Utah Athletics history.
“It’s hard to name just a few, but certainly football’s Fiesta Bowl win as the BCS Buster in 2004, the Sugar Bowl win over Alabama in ‘08, the multiple NCAA gymnastics championships, the 1998 men’s basketball Final Four, and the College Softball World Series trips in the early ‘90s rank among the best highlights.”
It has been quite a ride for Abel following Utah’s teams, and in the process she made sure everyone else knew about what was happening. That often meant rather than celebrating big wins, Abel was tethered to anything ranging from a typewriter, ditto machine, fax machine, modem, laptop or cell phone.
“Without question, the thing that has changed the most is the way we communicate,” Abel said. “When I started, our primary communication tools were a landline and face-to-face interactions. The internet, followed by the advent and explosion of social media, has brought on incredible and exciting change.”
While the number of bus rides, flights and hotel stays have become far too many to remember, Abel hasn’t forgotten the personal experiences.
“The best memories came from road trips with the teams,” she said. “The joy of working daily with incredible student-athletes, coaches and staff members, as well as colleagues at other schools and conferences, has never wavered. I’m not afraid to admit that I have found working with the media to be fun as well. Playing a part in the success of our teams and student-athletes, and having them stop in and visit after they graduate and move on, all of it has been incredibly rewarding.”