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Note: This story appeared in the Fall 2020 November edition of CoSIDA 360 Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.
Providing a Quality Student-Athlete Experience
Staff reductions, hiring freezes, furloughs and budgetary contraints are challenging for communicators from DI to DIII.
by CoSIDA New Media Committee Members
Alex Falk – Manhattanville College, Director of Athletic Communications @alex_falk
Dan Colleran – University of Notre Dame, Director of Athletics Communiations @dancolleran
Like almost all communications and sports information offices across the country, the pandemic has been challenging in many ways. Schools at all levels have had to adapt and continue to press forward while not knowing what the next day will bring.
With staff reductions, hiring freezes, furloughs and newly imposed budgetary constraints put in place — combined with health and safety considerations — so much of what we do and how we do it has to be altered.
At Notre Dame, we’ve been lucky enough to have football games, men’s and women’s soccer and volleyball matches and cross country meets to host and cover. While everything surrounding the games has changed, the events have served as a welcome point of pride with so many parts of the athletics department coming together to successfully and safely host events that allow our student-athletes to do what they love and compete.
Prior to competition getting underway, our communications team spent a great deal of time assisting our coaching staffs in various ways as it came to recruiting. Without official visits, how we were able to present our programs in various social and digital manners became a rallying point in our office as we continued to assert our value within the overall department.
Specific personnel challenges surrounding the Notre Dame athletics communications office have included being unable to hire student workers and the majority of freelancers we have used in the past for staffing games and helping out with broadcasts. Communications directors have cut more highlight packages, worked camera positions on national television broadcasts for the first times in their careers and generally filled more roles we all had our hands on at various points when we were breaking into the profession.
In comparison, life at Manhattanville College, a small Division III liberal arts institution in Westchester County, New York, has also been turned upside down. No longer are we working to staff games, create game programs, run live streams and stats for home contests or even have regular interaction with our colleagues.
Like most Division III institutions, Manhattanville will not be competing until at least the beginning of 2021. However, we have managed to welcome back a large portion of our student-athletes to campus with practices in the fall and the hope for a 2021 season.
Our job is to enhance the student-athlete experience. In order to do that, we’ve had to make various adjustments and concessions. First and foremost, we have made an extra push to capture media around practice. Simply recording new athletic activity, rather than using stock media photos from the season prior — which we have all been doing for the past seven months.
Additionally, we wanted to ensure our student-athletes still had a proper media day experience. Instead of hiring our regular contract photographer and his professional set up with all the bells and whistles, we have made do on our own. The effort is appreciated despite the unorthodox space in a large, empty gymnasium with just seven student-athletes at a time in order to maintain safe social distancing.
Staffing-wise, similar to Notre Dame, we’re unable to employ the same amount of student staff as normal. However, we still have a handful of interns and the goal remains the same; to provide a proper experience where they learn helpful skills as they move forward in the communications/media path. Thanks to conversations with our counterparts at other institutions, we were able to create a semester full of tasks and experiences that provide a proper internship. These range from informational interviews, virtual Photoshop lessons and AP writing workshops, to setting up virtual interviews for those off-campus so they can create their own video features.
As communicators, our skills translate to roles outside of athletics. At Manhattanville, we’ve spent time working on various tasks and projects with campus communications. Assisting with overall social media, editing videos and creating digital content for admissions are just some examples. Overall, this experience has pushed us to expand our working relationships with those outside of athletics. At Notre Dame, our Assistant Athletics Director for communications also has been part of a campus communications group since the summer months that has taken up significant time and added opportunities for other staff members to step in and help at departmental meetings and with various projects.
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