College Sports Information Directors of America

Related Content
• 2021 Special Awards Announcements and Features
• 2020 Special Awards Announcements and Features
• #CoSIDA21 Virtual Convention Home
• Past Arch Ward Award Recipients

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Special note: Due to the cancelation of the in-person 2020 and 2021 conventions, our CoSIDA Special Awards winners from those two years are being honored online this year. Leading up to our 2021 June Convention, we will honor many of them via video tributes and interviews. Along with video interviews, you also will find links to the recipients' feature stories and photo galleries.

An interview with the 2021 and 2020 Arch Ward Award Recipients

Inteview with Nick Guerrerio – CoSIDA Professional Development & Education Committee

• See below to read more about 2021 winner Pete Moore of Syracuse
• Click here for the feature on 2020 winner Judy Willson of LSU 

Arch Ward Award
Presented annually to a current CoSIDA member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college sports information, and who by his or her activities, has brought dignity and prestige to the profession. Voted on by the Special Awards Committee.

 


Pete Moore – Syracuse University, Director of Athletic Communications

2021 Arch Ward Award

by Peter D. Koryzno –SUNY Cortland, Director of Public Relations Emeritus
 
In the mid-1980s as the CoSIDA convention zigzagged across the nation annually, Ithaca College SID Pete Moore and his Division III colleagues treasured their annual interactions with the profession’s founders they reverently called “legends.”

“One year we had the legends checklist and we checked them off when we saw them,” recalled Moore, Director of Athletic Communications at the Syracuse University since 2007. “Having Bill Whitmore say ‘hi’ to me? I didn’t think there was anything better than that. Their congeniality, their personability, their ability to communicate. I can’t think of any instance where I didn’t go up and ask for advice that they didn’t give it to me.”

Those early encounters indelibly impacted Moore, who has emulated his heroes throughout a 39-year career representing an unceasing continuum of significant contributions to the sports information field.

And now, Moore is honored by his CoSIDA peers for these contributions and his commitment to the profession with the 2021 Arch Ward Award. This award is presented annually to a CoSIDA member who has made outstanding contributions to the field of college sports information, and who by his or her activities, has brought dignity and prestige to the profession.

Buoyed by supportive parents in East Aurora, N.Y., Moore first honed his journalistic skills directing the student radio and newspaper at Ashland University. He became SID for a year at his alma mater before following the basketball coach to Kansas Newman to handle all the college communications.
 

Looking to return East, Moore became SID at Ithaca College, which regularly hosted and won NCAA Division III championships.

“Being there at the right place at the right time, it was how my whole career took off,” said Moore, a member of the Ithaca College Hall of Fame. Lessons learned from its coaching giants - Jim Butterfield in football and George Valesente in baseball - shaped and reinforced Moore’s character.

“They were unbelievable human beings,” he explained. “Coach Butts had a way of making everyone feel like you were important and that they didn’t win unless you were there. Coach Val was so professional. Shine his shoes before every game? Are you kidding me? No facial hair. No screwing around. I love that. That was me, too. The whole culture was great.”

“The other thing that happened that had a real influence on me were the ECAC-SIDA and CoSIDA organizations. First was ECAC-SIDA because it was regionalized with East Coast SIDs from all divisions. Just getting to know people. What a resource, there’s nothing like it. You’re in a room with colleagues discussing the same problems and challenges. That was a huge influence on me.”

Moore soon joined the ECAC-SIDA Board of Directors, served as its president, and received its Irving Marsh Award. As for CoSIDA, Moore saw an opportunity to make a difference.

“It seemed that CoSIDA was really geared toward the university division,” he noted. “That had been its history. I understood that. I got interested in wanting to, if I could, find a way to give the small colleges a voice. I felt like every member should be equal. Membership cost was the same. Everything should be the same.”

Ithaca College’s president and athletic director backed Moore with the resources needed to overcome any perceived financial and time-constraint obstacles to a small college SID serving on the officer rotation and eventually as president. Moore would have been CoSIDA’s first since Luther College’s Warren Berg in the early 1960s, but before becoming CoSIDA president in 2000-2001, he accepted a position handling Syracuse University men’s basketball athletic communications.

Inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame, Moore served on the Board for 11 years and continued to champion inclusionary initiatives.

Since 1998, for more than half of his fabled 44 years and counting as Syracuse University’s head basketball coach, Jim Boeheim has trusted Moore to coordinate his media relations.

“Oddly enough, I think Coach is a big loyalty guy and I am a big loyalty guy,” said Moore. “That’s been a good match over the years. He likes consistency and so do I. One thing people don’t recognize about him is that he is a go-to for so many people. The national media when they need something about basketball. Other coaches. Everybody’s calling him and he always takes their calls. He is, in that case, just an unbelievable mentor.”

Moore, too, has been an exceptional teacher and an unselfish resource to the hundreds of student workers from Wichita to Syracuse who he’s supervised over the last three decades. His former charges now direct major university athletic departments, NFL team communications, ESPN productions, and collegiate sports information operations.

“I absolutely love it when they call me and ask me for advice,” he admitted. “I am flattered. I love giving back in that way.”

For years, Moore has cajoled them and himself with the words, “I just want to get to the mountaintop.”

“And you never really get to the mountaintop,” he added, “but it’s the effort to try to get there that should be your goal. You should always try to be better at what it is you are doing.”

Loving your job helps, too.

“I am lucky that I found what I like to do and that I have been able to stay in it,” observed Moore. “Most people change careers a couple of times. I have loved it the whole time that I have done it. Sure, there are frustrations, but most of the time I can’t wait to get in to work. It’s always been that way. So, I am very thankful for that.”

He and his wife, Catherine, an Ithaca College Sports Hall of Fame inductee as a member of two soccer national championship teams, have seven children in their merged family.

In 2021, Moore, the consummate professional who has elevated the profession through his hard work and dedication, is admittedly humbled to become just the third CoSIDA member to receive both the Warren Berg Award and Arch Ward Award.

While the distinction may not represent the mountaintop, it’s certainly worthy of adding Pete Moore to the prestigious list of CoSIDA legends.