College Sports Information Directors of America

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• CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee
• Communicators Outside the Lines Feature Series

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This is the next profile in a series entitled Communicators Outside the Lines: Better Yourself, Better Your Community produced by the CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee. Read past profiles at CoSIDA.com/CommunicatorsOTL.

WE NEED YOUR IDEAS!
If you have any ideas for this series, which will revolve around CoSIDA member volunteerism and health and wellness, please contact Goodwill and Wellness Committee chair Megan Jameson, St. Edward's University Associate AD for Marketing and Communications, at mhardin@stedwards.edu.

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Managing Health & Well-being

How five athletic communications professionals have handled the ups and downs of the pandemic.

by A.J. O'Hagan – Yeshiva University, Sports Information Director // Goodwill & Wellness Committee member

Sports Information Directors are creatures of habit. They rely heavily on their routines. On March 12, 2020, everything shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Athletic communications professionals suddenly went from working intense schedules to stopping completely. College sports would shut down the rest of the season. The long shutdown had an impact on everyone’s health and well-being. In this feature, we look at five athletic communications professionals and how each one has handled the pandemic.

Ken Johnson, Jr., who serves as the Director of Communications, Promotions, and Marketing for the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was on his campus when the world began to pause on March 12, 2020. MIT was one of the first schools to announce that they were shutting down athletics indefinitely. Johnson and his colleagues met with all the coaches in the morning, and then all the team captains at the gymnasium, Rockwell Cage, later in the day. The Engineers, a national powerhouse, were about to compete in both swimming and diving and track and field nationals, but their seasons were cut short due to the circumstances. “There were a lot of people upset,” Johnson recalled. “We were one of the first schools to make this decision, so I don’t blame them. We weren’t pioneers, but we were a little bit ahead of the curve.” 

Nearly everyone at MIT worked remotely from March 2020 until earlier this year. “I didn’t return to campus until about seven months after everything shut down,” Johnson said. “To go back to the office, it was like a ghost town. It was weird, and it was very upsetting. I felt bad for our student-athletes. March 2020 doesn’t seem like two years ago, but five years ago at this point.”
 

During the shutdown, Johnson helped organize a virtual campus tour since outside people were not allowed on campus. This was a big help for recruits who couldn’t be on campus. “We were able to bring the MIT experience to the prospective student-athletes and we safely filmed everything,” Johnson said. 

Johnson was anxious to work games again. However, he was able to find a key silver lining during the shutdown. He got to spend more time with his family, including his three-year-old nephew. “During a typical year, you don’t get to see your family too much unless you live really close to them.” He went out to see his parents five or six times for extensive stays during the shutdown. “To be able to see my nephew grow up a bit, that’s really good. I would never have been able to if I had been in the office on a regular basis.” 

With games being played again in 2021-22, Johnson has helped cover some incredible runs. Both the MIT women’s soccer and women’s volleyball programs advanced to the Elite 8 round of the NCAA Tournament. “The department was all in this year,” Johnson said. “It was really cool having the student-athletes come up to you during photo day and being so happy to see you again,” Johnson said. “At our Elite 8 women’s soccer match, most of the fans were student-athletes. Some people were dressed up in tiger costumes and it was an awesome atmosphere. It was great seeing our teams support one another. It was indicative on how our whole department came back.” 

Another sports information professional had strong experiences during the shutdown. Allison Hogue was an intern for the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) in Lilburn, Ga., during the 2019-20 season. She was helping the staff prepare for the WBCA Convention which would be held at the Final Four every year. On March 10, Hogue was in her office and was called into the common area. She and the rest of the staff were informed that the convention was going to be canceled due to the pandemic. “I was devastated,” Hogue said, “We put so much hard work into this, only to have it taken away from us.”

Two days later, the world shut down and everyone from the WBCA was sent home. “I was in panic mode, I didn’t know what was going on,” Hogue recalled. “I was asking a lot of questions in my head. ‘Where were we, what was happening?’” 

For the first week of the pandemic, Hogue was alone in her apartment in Atlanta before her parents picked her up to go home. “It was a weird moment. It was weird being in this situation,” Hogue said. “At the same time, it was depressing, and my anxiety was ramping up. It was a really dark time.”
 

Hogue was able to finish her WBCA internship from home. “The biggest curve ball that was thrown at me, was being sent out into the open with a tough job market ahead,” Hogue said.

Throughout the shutdown, Hogue battled with depression, anxiety, and disappointment. “At one point, I thought I was being set up for failure,” Hogue admitted. “I was upset and mad with how things were going. Here was me in my first year out of college, beginning my life as a young professional in the sports industry. Then suddenly, I move back home because of the pandemic.”

To keep herself occupied during the shutdown, Hogue got heavily involved with CoSIDA. She sat in on several of the organization’s virtual coffee shops and connected with several SIDs throughout the country. “It started a new opportunity for me within the profession,” Hogue said. After participating in her first round of the CoSIDA Fitness Challenge, she became the Co-Captain for Team Autism Awareness and Acceptance and helped lead the virtual fitness team during the next three rounds. This was a personal mission for her since she is on the autism spectrum. She also joined CoSIDA’s Young Professional’s Committee. “Looking back on that, there were a lot of positives that happened to me during the shutdown,” Hogue said. 

Hogue currently works as a graduate assistant for the sports information department at Sacred Heart University, in Fairfield, Conn. She serves as the primary contact for men’s soccer, women’s basketball, women’s lacrosse, cross country, and track & field. “I feel like I am in my happy spot and a lot happier than I was in March of 2020,” Hogue said. “Every day I love coming into to work and doing what I love and getting to be around the student-athletes.”

In addition to her position at Sacred Heart, Hogue co-founded an advocacy group for individuals in the profession with mental health struggles and disabilities. She wants to help individuals who go through the same struggles she has experienced. The committee is now officially affiliated with CoSIDA’s Goodwill and Wellness Committee.
 
Jeffrey Bernstein serves as the Athletic Communications Manager at New York University, a place he has worked at since 1999. He has been in the profession for 40 years and is known as the “SID Godfather.”

On March 12, Bernstein was in Arizona to see some spring training games during a mini vacation with some of his friends. “Things already started getting a little bit concerning before we left,” Bernstein said. He was driving to the stadium to see the spring training game when he heard on the radio that “as of 4pm, all games are canceled.” The SID veteran could not see the spring training games, but he had even bigger concerns. “I was now concerned with getting home,” Bernstein said. “It hit me from a professional and personal standpoint at the same time.” 

The NYU teams were in different parts of the country, scheduled to play games, but had to get on flights to go back to New York City without getting a chance to compete. “It was very surreal and very concerning, and I knew we were heading into a very bad time,” Bernstein explained.
 

Bernstein, who is in CoSIDA's Hall of Fame and also the current chair of the CoSIDA Fred Stabley Sr. Writing Contest Committee, made sure to keep himself occupied both with work and recreational activities. “I never felt that I had nothing to do,” he noted. Although working from home was a major adjustment, Bernstein was able to adapt. “You got used to it after a while,” he said.

When Bernstein returned to the campus, he expanded his role to help others. He volunteered in other aspects of student affairs, including as a member of the University's "IQ Coordinator Program", an initiative set up to work virtually with students who were either isolating or quarantining due to COVID. "The idea was to let them know we cared, answer all their questions and support them as a 'point person' during this difficult time. It was a really gratifying experience and made me feel like I was doing something positive during such a negative time." 

To fight the struggles of the shutdown and the pandemic, Bernstein tried as best as he could to do the things he would normally do. “I didn’t isolate,” Bernstein explained. He went out for walks, went bike-riding, and played tennis. “I was never overly afraid of getting COVID,” he said. “I was very careful with what I did. But I didn’t feel that isolating was the best thing for me. I didn’t think that would sit well with me in a mental health capacity.” 

Deeper into the shutdown, Bernstein had concerns. “Are we ever going to get through this? Will we ever return to normal? Are we ever going to be able to live like we did before?” 

Despite NYU not having any athletics competition through the 2020-21 academic year, Bernstein found some bright spots to the situation. For example, when working from home, he saved two and a half hours a day by not commuting back and forth. He found some more time to take care of himself physically. “I want to remain physically active,” Bernstein explained. “Tennis to me is perfect. I wasn’t risking myself by playing tennis, unlike basketball and football which have players on top of each other.”

Bernstein also took advantage of Zoom. He participated in virtual social hang outs. “To get everybody together, I made sure we had different groups and checked to see how they were doing. We can see people more often that don’t live close to us because of Zoom,” he noted.

Right now, the NYU teams are competing again. Despite some recent postponements, Bernstein is back in the groove and covering several teams, including the nationally ranked No. 4 (WBCA) women’s basketball team. 

Jenna Willhoit, the Assistant Director of Athletic Communications at the University of Dayton (located in Dayton, Ohio), was also impacted by the pandemic. On March 11, 2020, she was covering the Flyers’ softball team at Morehead State. Just a typical day during the spring season. Then the next day, everything was canceled. “I didn’t believe it was actually happening,” Willhoit recalled. “It was ironic because several years earlier, I was speaking to a group of students at a symposium hosted by Northern Kentucky University and I literally said, ‘there will never not be sports’, in response to someone asking me if I felt secure in my job. Never say never!”

Unfortunately for Willhoit, the shutdown caused her to be furloughed. “At first it was nice being home alone all day with no responsibilities, really,” Willhoit said.

Things got tough for Willhoit. Not only was she furloughed, but she was living alone and had to put her cat down in August of 2020. “I was a wreck,” she said. “I was worried. Worried about whether I’d get my job back, about if I’d need to sell my house, I worried about getting sick and my family members getting sick.”
 

Despite the struggles, Willhoit made some adjustments to improve her mental health and wellbeing. She got a job at a restaurant to counteract the feelings of being lonely. “I needed to be around people again,” she declared. She also reunited with her friends and colleagues, via Zoom. She was a member of a group of SIDs from across the country that got together for Zoom happy hours every Thursday evening. “Being able to ‘see’ friends through Zoom and apps on my phone helped a ton,” she revealed. Once the weather got warmer, she had lunch with her co-worker and supervisor on the front porch of her supervisor’s house which helped her feel connected again.

After being furloughed for several months, Willhoit finally returned to work at the University of Dayton. She covered several winter and spring teams, all at the same time, during the 2020-21 season. However, there were no spectators. “It was weird and eerily quiet,” Willhoit recalled. “But I was so thankful to have a job because I know there are many others that were not recalled to their positions.”

In 2021-22, Willhoit has been able to get back to a form of normalcy by working games and working a regular schedule. Although with the new variant, Willhoit worries about more shutdowns, and it is having a negative impact on her mental health. However, the Dayton Assistant Director of Athletic Communications is once again in rhythm, back at work, and in a much better place mentally compared to where she was last year.

And last, but not least, is Lenn Margolis who works for Lehman College, in the Bronx, N.Y., as the Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information and Intramurals. On March 11, 2020, Margolis was setting up for the Lehman College baseball team’s 2020 home-opening doubleheader against Yeshiva University. He was halfway out the door to bring equipment down to the South Field on campus when he received a call and found out that everything was shutting down. “I remember thinking that I was disappointed for our student-athletes because it was their home opener,” Margolis explained. “At the time, I thought we would only shut down for a couple of weeks or a month and get back to playing games.”

A couple of weeks turned into several months for the shutdown with no end in sight. Unlike several other schools and conferences, Lehman College and the CUNY Athletic Conference had the entire 2020-21 season canceled, in addition to the spring of 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Although Margolis missed working games and interacting with his student-athletes, coaches, and colleagues, the pandemic took a toll on him in a different way. His dad passed away in December of 2020 (non-COVID related). “It was very tough not to be there with him and say goodbye,” Margolis said. “It was also hard not being there for my mom who struggled as his primary caregiver, and I could see her suffering and not taking care of herself. Managing that along with my sister from a distance was far from ideal."
 

Margolis relied on his family to help him through the tough times of the pandemic. Both of his adult kids moved home. He did several activities with his wife and daughters like doing jigsaw puzzles, cooking, binge-watching television shows, and going on long walks. “Being with family really helped me,” Margolis said. “I never expected to have a full house again after my kids moved out. We spent a lot of time together and had fun with each other as a family.”

Another silver lining during the pandemic was that Margolis got to reunite with his mother on multiple occasions. “Between me and my sister, who lives in Arizona, someone tried to see her every four-to-six weeks during the first year my dad was gone,” Margolis said. “That first year was tough for everyone. Going through all those yearly milestones without him was hard on everyone."

After successfully navigating through the shutdown with his family, Margolis was finally back in action as an SID in the fall of 2021. Games were being played again on the Lehman College South Field and the APEX Main Gymnasium. The Lightning women’s and men’s soccer programs each earned berths in the CUNYAC Championship match.

“It was great to see our student-athletes start to compete again this fall,” Margolis said. However, the pandemic has not yet ended, and Lehman College continues to be very cautious during these risky times. The athletic department is the only department that is fully back on campus. Only in-season coaches can be at their desks during the day. Half the classes are taught on campus, while the other half of the classes are held virtually. Lehman College looks and feels like a ghost town. “Staffing games has been more of a struggle since we have been back,” Margolis revealed. “I’ve had to rely on family members and the conference office to help when I couldn’t secure help for the scoreboard, PA, and video.”

Margolis also has to deal with a shrinking staff due to cuts that had to be made during the pandemic. “Two years ago, the sports information department at Lehman was me and two part-time people, as well as a gameday personnel,” Margolis explained. “Now it’s just me, one part-time person, and less gameday personnel to draw from. We are staffing gameday positions with rookies and volunteers that need a lot of training.”

With the new omicron variant now in the United States, more games at Lehman have been postponed and rescheduled.

“The word for this academic year must be flexibility,” Margolis said. “Everybody still wants to play games. We just need to adapt to our ever-changing protocols.” Lehman’s winter schedules are changing every day, but right now, the Lightning winter teams are currently in action and getting contests in.

Margolis remains optimistic that everything will work out for everyone involved in the Lehman College Athletic Department. “I think we will get through this a lot faster than the first time,” Margolis said. “I think when it is all said and done, we will get most of our contests played.”

Each athletic communications professional featured in this piece has some advice they would like to share with their colleagues on how to take care of yourself during these tough times, both professionally and personally. What should you do if you are struggling or how to best prevent yourselves from struggling?

Johnson, Jr.: "Don’t be afraid to talk to your friends and try to get some help. This is not all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of people are facing struggles that you might not see on the outside. Every day is a grind. If you are having a problem, don’t be ashamed to say something to somebody. I know not everyone has a close-knit community or group of friends, but there are resources that help with stuff like this on campus. Have the courage to reach out and talk to those folks on your campus."

Hogue: "Remember that you are not alone. Someday we are going to get out of this. You have to stay positive and be resilient. You have to look at the bright side and know that what you are doing is not only going to benefit your department but also the University. Always have the mindset of “how am I going to best serve my team? Especially during these tough times."

Bernstein: "With what’s happened now for almost two years, it’s foolish not to look at your own situation. Put yourself as a priority. People have to look at themselves and do what’s best for themselves. If it’s talking to people or to get tested frequently to make sure you are okay, you have to take care of yourself. If you have an issue with something, talk to someone. Whether it’s a friend, a professional, a family member, or a medical person, there is no time to be shy. No time to put everything else ahead of you. Under the circumstances, you are the priority. You have to put yourself in a good position physically and mentally."

Willhoit: "Reach out to someone, don't try to go it alone. Some may feel like asking for help is a sign of weakness but that cannot be farther from the truth. If this pandemic has taught me one thing it's that I need people. I need other people's help. We all do."

Margolis: "Don’t go it alone. You have family, coworkers, friends, and professionals to lean on. They are all there to help. In this profession we rely on each other a lot. Our colleagues are always there to lend a hand and help whenever they can. The sports information community is very special in that way. It’s not like that in other industries. Also, be flexible. When going through something like this there is so much that is not in our control. Most of us are not involved in making the decision whether we play, postpone, or cancel games. Sometimes just doing the basics, whatever that may be, must be enough. When the goal posts are being moved on us daily it is nearly impossible to go above and beyond like most of us strive to do."

Sports Information Directors are creatures of habit. They have also shown during these times that they are creatures of wisdom, flexibility, and resiliency.

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