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Stew Salowitz – Illinois Wesleyan University, Sports Information Emeritus

CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award

by Randy Kindred, retired sports editor of the Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph

Stew Salowitz's drive toward a career in sports began before he was old enough to get behind the wheel. It was set in motion when he was a passenger on buses carrying the Illinois State University men’s basketball team to road games in the mid-1960s.
 
Salowitz had an “in.” His father, Dr. Irving Salowitz, was director of Illinois State’s health services and team doctor for a number of ISU sports.
 
“I remember going on road trips with dad with Jim Collie’s basketball teams when I was 10 or 11 years old,” Salowitz said. “Later I would tell that story to people and say, ‘Here I am 40 years old and I’m still riding on buses with college kids.’
 
“It’s funny how that worked out because I loved sports as a kid and I turned out making a living out of it.”
 
After 10-plus years as an afternoon host and sportscaster at Bloomington Illinois’ WJBC Radio, Salowitz took over as Illinois Wesleyan University sports information director in 1988. It was the start of a 31-year run that ended with Salowitz’s retirement from his alma mater in 2019.
 
Salowitz is a recipient of a 2020 CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award. 
 
 
Salowitz’s task in 1988 was to carry on the high quality and tireless work of IWU’s first sports information director, Ed Alsene, who had retired.
 
“Following Ed, he’s a Hall of Famer in CoSIDA and he was just amazing in his profession that he knocked out as much as he did for what he had to work with,” Salowitz said. “When I started we were still using a ditto machine. When we got a copy machine in the fieldhouse (Fred Young Fieldhouse), that was like a miracle had happened.
 
“Then it goes to getting a fax machine and then email and now Twitter and Facebook and web pages. It was an electronic explosion.”
 
Salowitz kept pace, disseminating info on the exploits of Illinois Wesleyan athletes seamlessly as the names, faces and platforms changed. He spread the word about Titan athletes of all shapes, sizes and specialties. 
 
The common thread was success. The NCAA Division III school has a rich history of championship teams in multiple sports.
 
“We had 13 sports when I started in 1988 and we had 22 when I left,” Salowitz said. “I got to see women’s golf and women’s soccer added … just so many things that got brought in.
 
“They could have added nine sports to make it 22, but we added sports that we wound up being good at. Women’s soccer, for example, has been to like 10 NCAA tournaments. We didn’t just add teams. We added quality teams and coaches and players. That was fun. It’s always more fun to write about winning than losing.”
 
Salowitz witnessed a lot of winning as a student at Wesleyan from 1972-76. He was there for the heyday of basketball star center Jack Sikma, who went on to a long NBA career and earned induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
 
An English and journalism major, Salowitz gravitated toward radio. He secured an internship with a local rock and roll station, WIHN, through the help of his academic advisor, Harvey Beutner.
 
“Harvey kind of turned me loose and let me arrange my schedule,” Salowitz said. “I always valued the classes that I had with him and the time he gave me on my own to kind of do my own independent study. He was terrific.”
 
As a senior, Salowitz would sign WIHN on the air each morning, do a show from 6 to 9 a.m. and then attend his Illinois Wesleyan classes.
 
During that time and later at WJBC Radio, he frequently received press releases. Some were sports-related and others not, but all helped Salowitz during his transition to sports information.
 
“I had a pretty good idea of what was valuable and what was not just from being on the receiving end,” he said. “I had an idea of what should be on the distribution end, so that helped.”
 
Salowitz said he also benefited from his interaction with student workers during his tenure. That was especially true as the means for processing and distributing information evolved.
 
While Salowitz had a desire to “kind of be on the cutting edge” of emerging technology, he said, “The students helped me with that.”
 
“I was blessed with kids who knew what they were doing … with student workers who were extraordinarily smart,” he said. “I never married and had kids on my own, but I guess I had dozens of kids who I considered my own. 
 
“They were my lifeline through a lot of that stuff for laughing and getting work done. I miss them a lot. I miss some of the work, but I miss the kids most of all. They were so great to be around.”
 
Salowitz, 65, said he is humbled by his selection for the CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award.
 
“It’s special to be honored by a group of people who know what it’s like to work hard and appreciate other people who have done that,” he said. “Thirty-one years is a long time and it went fast. The love of sports has stayed and it was a great way to be involved.”