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Past 25-Year Award Recipients
Amy Villa – San José State University, Interim Athletics Media Relations Director
CoSIDA 25-Year Award
by Lawrence Fan – San José State, Associate Athletics Director for Football Comms & Special Projects
The Capital University speech communications major grew up a passionate Ohio State Buckeyes football fan, reveled in the Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine era, would spend at least one week each summer at the Ohio State Fair showing the family’s prized dairy cattle, and once planned to be an English teacher.
Keeping her sports red-letter days and blue ribbons and adding San José State University golden moments since 1993, Interim Athletics Media Relations Director
Amy Villa is a 2021 CoSIDA 25-Year Award recipient.
“I’m doing something I like to do – promote the student-athletes and go to sporting events. It (the job) combines everything I like – sports, writing, and publicizing,” said Villa.
Her SID career began in 1989 as a student assistant at the NCAA Division III school, an hour from her home in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, and also includes a year at the University of Minnesota.
“Watching student-athlete achievement, watching them win special awards, special matches, that’s the nice part about this job,” Villa noted.
Photo taken at Amy Villa’s daughter Grace's last marching band performance in high school. Amy was the Student Accounts representative for three years and assisted at band competitions whenever available or when she did not have Spartan events.
Villa remembers Capital’s thermal FAX machine, San Jose State’s paper fax machines, and the start of email. She’s adapted to the current technology and professional trends relying heavily on CoSIDA.com’s continuing education webinars and CoSIDA Convention sessions.
“I think she is as knowledgeable a person as there is in this industry. Amy doesn’t go out and seek recognition, but she is one of the smartest people I know and she knows virtually everything,” said Richard Stern, a San Diego State assistant media relations director formerly at San Jose State. “She knows what to do, when to do it and how to do it correctly, That’s one of the things I took when I left San Jose State.
“Being able to have someone there like Amy, who had been doing this close to 15 years (before I arrived) was tremendously helpful. Being able to sit across from her and bounce ideas off or just flat out ask what was going on, how does this work, how do I fix this was tremendously helpful to me,” Stern added.
Villa now is one of only 33 CoSIDA 25-Year Award winning women since the first awards in 1991. She is in an even more distinct 25-year SID demographic as a married mom with a daughter, Grace, now a San Jose State freshman.
“I understand why this is a tough profession to be in if you are a woman. You have to have a really good support system to do this job and a spouse that understands. I have a spouse who works and does events with me. I had a really good support system around me that if we needed a babysitter or somewhere for my daughter to go, we had enough options that I didn’t have to worry about her,” Villa said. Her husband Derrick was a long-time San Jose radio newscaster before the station changed formats.
“When Grace was little, there was no social media. Now with social media on top of doing all the other ‘PR,’ it’s a lot harder now to turn off and put the phone away,” Villa continued. “You’re connected all the time. You have to figure out how you have a work-life balance.”
Volleyball, gymnastics, women’s golf, beach volleyball, women’s swimming and diving, and women’s tennis are her focus in San Jose State’s 22-sports program.
Retired Spartan women’s golf coach John Dormann valued Villa’s “SID intuition.”
“She made life much easier for me getting out whatever information needed to be out on the website, to the public, to the fans, to the parents, and whomever is paying attention, because there are no press conferences in college golf. Amy was my connection back to the real world, and to what was happening,” said Dormann.
"Amy Villa cares deeply for our student-athletes and coaches," said Marie Tuite, San Jose State’s athletics director. "She's the first one to say her work is ‘all about the student-athletes.’ When we've hosted conference, NCAA and special events, she's made important contributions. Amy's been an integral part of moving our Athletics program forward."
“You’re trying to show your city and your university in the best possible light. You don’t want anything to go wrong. You want everything to be perfect,” Villa said about being a NCAA or conference championship host SID.
Outside of her San Jose State responsibilities, Villa is in her 12th year on the CoSIDA Academic All-America Committee. She is a United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) and Association for Women in Sports Media member, too.
When asked what lies ahead professionally, Villa noted that “I hope whoever I work with, whether it’s here or another position, I teach. I contribute to their life and provide them the skills they need to be successful. When they leave here, they are the best they can be at their job and they know how to do things the right way.”
Gallery: (4-28-2021) Amy Villa, 25-Year Award