It’s on! Prepping for the Big D (Dallas) NCAA Women’s Basketball combined championships

It’s on! Prepping for the Big D (Dallas) NCAA Women’s Basketball combined championships

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This story is part of our CSC 360 package for March 2023, to view more stories, click here.

It’s on! Prepping for the Big D (Dallas) NCAA women’s basketball combined championships

by Barb Kowal – College Sports Communicators, Director of Professional Development and External Affairs

As we publish this, it is nine days away from NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Selection Sunday. We go behind the scenes with some of the NCAA’s principal communications professionals whose women’s basketball championship work will culminate in Dallas the weekend of March 31-April 2, as all three champions (Divisions I, II and III) will be celebrated at the American Airlines Center.

March Madness is upon us, and it’s a time of the year where the popularity of basketball conference and postseason events across all divisions of colleges and universities finds hundreds of teams – and thousands of staff members, including CSC members – engaged in hosting, publicizing, storytelling and promoting the teams and players.

And, for those who work in communications and media coordination at the NCAA, it’s just as challenging.

For the second time in history, and to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX, all three NCAA women’s basketball championship games (Division I, Division II, Division III) will take place at one site – the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. American Airlines Center is the host site for the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship semifinals on Friday, March 31 and the title game on Sunday, April 2 (to be broadcast for the first time on ABC). And, the championship games for NCAA Division II and Division III basketball will be held on Saturday, April 1. The American Airlines Center is home to the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association and the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League.

It takes a legion of committed NCAA staff members and volunteers, many College Sports Communicators members from across the country, to pull off championship weekends.

Here, we take a look at five from the NCAA media coordination and statistics staff and digital/social staff who power the communications, media coordination and digital efforts during the NCAA women’s tournaments: media coordination associate directors Rick Nixon and Michelle Watsky; assistant directors Nick Moeller and Cassie Langdon; and Chris Dion, NCAA associate director of digital and social media.
 
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2019 NCAA Women's Basketball Media Coordination Group


The Players

The communications and media coordination point guard for all things Division I women’s basketball championship, Rick Nixon just celebrated his 18th anniversary at the NCAA. He has served as the media coordinator for the NCAA’s highest profile women’s sport since 2006 and works directly with the NCAA women's basketball staff and the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee. In 2013, Nixon received a 25-Year Award from CSC to mark a quarter century of service to the profession, and previously served at University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) before coming to the NCAA.

When interviewed in mid-February, Nixon noted that there are significant moving parts for the NCAA event in Dallas, particularly with all three divisions playing.

“There are so many more logistics when three national championships will be decided at the same site in the same weekend,” Nixon noted. “We had to figure out all the scheduling, work with different broadcast and programming needs, press conferences and media availabilities, and re-introduce public open practices; we will have four of them on Thursday. ESPN and ABC are our broadcast partners for the Division I Women's Final Four, while CBSSports will broadcast the D2 and D3 championship games on their platforms.

This all adds an interesting dynamic and we are working hard to ensure it all fits together for our eight participating teams – the NCAA Division I Final Four participants and the participating teams competing for Division II and III titles.”

Although Nixon handles media coordination roles for NCAA Division I and II field hockey among other duties, the preparation for the D1 women’s basketball tournament is year-round. He discusses that and more, below.
 
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2022 NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four digital and social media team.


Running post-season championships takes a monumental effort. Who works directly on the upcoming 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championships, and who will be the principal NCAA staffers in Dallas?

Michelle Watsky
is our lead for all things credentials throughout the tourney, for Women’s Final Four media seating. She's in charge of a lot of the behind-the-scenes collateral, the online library of all the electronic templates, statistics, press conference notes and transcripts. She is the driver in all that. Michelle is in charge of shipping of all our credentials to each site, too. She’s doing all that right now, along with coordinating and shipping credential pins and photo vests and armbands. And, at the WFF, she also is in charge of still photographers and is the lead on photographers needs and in helping them on site. That’s Michelle's world.
 
Cassie Langdon helps with media lodging at the Final Four and she is in charge of a lot of our special programs. We're doing a special program with Rising Media Stars, hosted by TV analyst LaChina Robinson. The particpants will observe the functions of production and on-air talent first-hand (play by play, analyst, producer and reporter viewpoints). She also manages the Rhoden Fellows Program participants who are coming again this year; award-winning journalist Bill Rhoden coordinates it. It's a training program for the next generation of sports journalists from historically black colleges and universities.

Cassie also works on some of the collateral pieces. On site, she'll do a lot of the on floor, help helping out with game management and media ops.
 
Nick Moeller will join us in Dallas as the Division II and Division III media coordinator for their championship games. He’s also going to be doing some courtside management, working backstage within the media work room and media interview room. Nick will be our NCAA liaison to Hammond Communications, our partner who run the press conferences and feeds.
 
We’ve also got a digital and social team, led by Chris Dion, who has been doing terrific work since the beginning of the basketball season in showcasing the game and the players, going on tours throughout the country to visit campuses and teams with behind-the-scenes looks, showcasing player and coach personalities. Their tour series on social has drawn phenomenal attention to our game.

What other type of storytelling, messaging and communication has taken place and will take place during 2022-23 for women’s basketball?

Throughout the year, I produce our Division I 'team of the week' and a 'top starting five for the week' series and we work with Turner, our media partner, on storylines and features. These are also re-purposed for our social channels.

Throughout the year, and in particular around Selection Sunday and the tournament, I work closely with the NCAA communications staff and the NCAA social and digital staff. With the NCAA communications team, we have highlighted the Title IX 50th anniversary and gender equity ties to women's basketball, for instance. Meghan Durham, associate director of communications, is a main contact for the big-picture messaging and storytelling. In fact, Meghan and others from communications play a huge role in our overall strategy and crisis communications planning. I work with them in formulating our speaking points on Selection Sunday for our women's basketball committee chair and members, so we can address questions from the media, from our ESPN partner, as the selections and pairings are announced.

As I mentioned earlier, we've seen tremendous growth in our social and digital year-round coverage, coverage headed by Chris Dion and Daress McClung. They tour around the country, on our new NCAA women’s basketball college road trip series, stopping at Division I programs, including Power 5 schools and mid-majors. They've executed a robust plan, have a solid budget, and they've really done a great job and they have some really good numbers to show in terms of engagement. The tour has taken on a life of its own and it's gotten to the point where schools are reaching out to us begging us to come to their campuses!
 
 
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Michelle Watsky, Rick Nixon and Cassie Langdon at the 2022 Women's Final Four.


What’s the planning schedule for an event like the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship? What type of review from the past year takes place?

Actually, after each Final Four, I take a little vacation, and then we gear up again and start planning in earnest for the next year. And I'm not talking about all the site visits that you might do two, three years in advance. You really start working on the next championship, drilling down at the communications level, a month after the Final Four ends. We, the NCAA staff which works directly with women’s basketball, will go back to that Final Four city to do a recap meeting on the “good, the bad and the ugly.” We also do calls with each of the Final Four teams to get their feedback while it's still fresh on their minds, speaking with primary team administrators and coaches. It’s really valuable and helpful to get everyone’s perspective. An example – we’ll talk about the news conferences, How long should they last? There’s healthy discussion on over-arching topics and even to the minutiae, like, what's the order of the press conferences? Should it be the non-advancing team first, the winning team second, or vice versa?

This past year, we also went back to the First Four teams to get their thoughts as 2022 was the first time we had a “first four” competition in the women’s tourney.
 
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Chris Dion at the Women's Final Four in Minneapolis.


When do you reset the schedule for the upcoming championships and plan trips to the host sites?

We start hitting the next host city a month after the last championship. Members of the NCAA women’s basketball staff started traveling to 2023 Final Four host site Dallas in May and June. I really don't go there until August or September, and then I try to go every other month through the end of the year, then visit in January and February.

In the spring and summer, the NCAA women’s basketball staff and our staff examines and works on the upcoming year’s host operations manuals. We have separate ones for the First Four; one for first and second rounds; one for the regionals and one for the Final Four. Are there any policy changes or things that we need to tweak? Coming off the COVID years, are there things that we tweaked during the COVID years, and now we are moving back to pre-COVID standards. So so we do a lot of that work to and that early fall, but then we're also resetting all the calendars for site visits to our next cities.

Along with visits to the Final Four site, we travel to our regional sites in November. This year, in a new format, Division I women’s basketball will have two regional sites – in Greenville, South Carolina and in Seattle. At both the regional and Final Four sites, I’ll meet with the host media coordinators and the host staffs.

For the Final Four, the Big 12 Conference is hosting the Women’s Final Four in Dallas with (associate director of media services) David Waxman serves as host coordinator. We have media operations meetings, game ops meetings, get a feel for the building and make sure that we're outlining all the variables, room assignments, things like that. We get those building pieces done first, and then we work on the schedule after that. David assembles a group of media volunteers and we blend responsibilities and duties with them and with our NCAA full-time staff and our national volunteer media coordination committee, made up of many CSC members, to what makes sense in roles and responsibilities.

And then, the week prior to Selection Show Sunday, I hunker down with four or five members of the NCAA women's basketball staff and the 12 members of the Division I Women's Basketball Selection Committee in our "war room" at the NCAA headquarters.
 
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Nick Moeller moderating a press conference after a 2022 DII Women's Basketball Elite Eight game.


In talking about media credentials, we see that the NCAA revamped its credential criteria and guidelines for all sports championships. Talk about that process that took place to get these new policies set for the 2022-23 championships.

Our media coordination staff had lots of internal strategy sessions last spring and summer, and we did revamp our credential criteria for all 90 of our championships that you'll see on NCAA.com.

We made one credential criteria document, looking at what makes sense, what was antiquated. With our new policies, it gives us a little bit more leverage in looking at agencies, bloggers, the dot coms, and asking, what makes sense from a coverage standpoint? We took special strides to make sure things are more defined and that this is a good workable document. We're trying to do our due diligence that way.

Last year’s media attention and attendance in Minneapolis for the WFF was … tremendous! How do you distinguish between all the media requests?

Last year’s Women’s Final Four was our biggest credentialed media crowd in history - 868. Minneapolis was limited in space and that created quite the challenge. My philosophy has been, when credentialing media, to really look and ask, what exclusive content are they providing? Are they really covering women's basketball in the manner they need to, to be able to qualify for a women's Final Four credential? Are they doing exclusive content? Fresh content or just repurposing content? Getting the right people at the table, making sure that those that are covering are super legit, so we can set up a proper working environment so people can do their jobs correctly.
 
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Rick Nixon with the 2018 Women's Basketball national championship trophy in Columbus.


Where do you feel you make the biggest contributions in on NCAA Selection Sunday?

I'm in the room with the 12-member selection committee throughout the week prior (along with NCAA Men’s Basketball Media Coordinator Dave Worlock with the men’s committee). We are the NET rankings experts, the historical experts, and able to provide injured unavailable player information, team information, do conference championship monitoring, that kind of thing. We are in the room to help with those kinds of questions. Our primary roles is make keep things moving. At the end of the day, we're going we work on speaking points around decisions being made - why was this a team A on the two (second seed) line? It really comes in handy to have those speaking points to reflect back on what was talked about during the week so the committee is prepared when the hard questions come on Sunday, and in real time. And, we're always kind of tracking on that anticipated line of questioning too, to make sure that what we provide is the best information possible.
 
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Rick Nixon on the set of ESPN SportsCenter


Nick Moeller: Hosting All Three NCAA Women's Basketball Championship Together This Year

Like many on the NCAA media coordination and statistics staff, Nick Moeller came to the national office from the campus and conference athletic communications ranks. Now in his second year as assistant director, Moeller previously served at the Gulf South Conference (as assistant commissioner/communications), the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (director of strategic communications & new media) and the University of Montevallo (assistant SID).

“Admittedly, it is a heck of an undertaking to have all three championships contested in Dallas in the span of three days, adding more layers to the planning and execution of the Women’s Final Four,” Moeller said. “And, it’s an undertaking well worth it with our guiding objective being how to make the student-athlete experience as memorable and special as possible. We’ve put a premium on things which will amplify their experience, tell their stories, as we let our Division II and Division III championship game participants know that they are part of something bigger – the continuation of the growth of the sport."
 
This is a jam-packed time for Moeller, who serves as NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Elite Eight, being contested at St. Joseph Civic Arena in St. Joseph, MO From there, he’ll made the quick trip to Dallas for the championship games.

"It's going to be an extravangza in Dallas," said Moeller, who also serves as the Division I women’s soccer College Cup and Division I men’s and women’s outdoor track and field championship media coordinator.  "We've got a deep and skilled staff, and a built-in national media coverage and fan support for our D2 and D3 participants. The media setup and press conference setup will be the same, and the attention on the social and digital fronts for storytelling will be tremendous. We are working with two different broadcast partners - ESPN/ABC for the Division I games and CBSSports Network for the D2 and D3 championships, so there a lot of logistics right there to coordinate."

There is a level of personal and professional excitement for Moeller once he hits Dallas.
 
"The opportunity to showcase the game on this stage is important to me, and it will be a full-cricle moment," he noted. "I have connections to both D2 and D3. I went to D3 Kaamazoo College and worked in their SID office, and also spent time at D2 Montavello and the PSAC and Gulf South conferences. I am excited for our Division II and Division III women's basketball student-athletes to get the platform and experience on the big stage at American Airlines Arena."


Chris Dion on the NCAA Women’s Basketball College Road Trip Series And Digital/Creative Content For The Sport

Dion, the NCAA associate director of digital and social media, is behind the creation of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Road Trip Series. Started in August, the first stop was at the University of Kentucky. On the tour, the NCAA creative staff and broadcasters are granted an inside look at these schools to shoot videos, snap photos, showcase facilities, and talk with the players and coaching staffs. There’s also exclusive “behind the scenes” content at the stops.

“We are making massive investments in women’s basketball on the digital side, and this new road trip series was designed to build momentum in the regular season,” Dion noted. “Starting with Kentucky in August, we visited 25 campuses this year. It’s great to meet teams on their own turf, to walk into their homes, and they’ve welcomed us again and again. And, we meet them where they are, social-media wise. These are not long-form pieces, but it’s all about meeting the student-athletes where they live – creating content on Tik Tok and Instagram, and focusing on their personalities and showing the work they are putting into their game.”

Dion spoke about the rising engagement and popularity of women’s basketball on the social and digital front.

“Admittedly, women’s basketball is brushed under by college football and we want to change that conversation. Right now, we have over 1 million followers on the Women’s Basketball March Madness platforms. People are interested in our social brand and we owe it to communicate with them as much as we can and get them excited about women’s basketball.

Autumn Johnson is our dedicated analyst for women’s basketball. It’s our goal to be relevant and not take a break,from preseason through the Final Four. We also traveled to key games, our Madness Matchups as we called them, like South Carolina-Stanford, Texas-Oklahoma. So, on game days, we offer a different experience, a different angle than your traditional broadcast.”

And, the result of this year’s college road trip experience has been nothing but positive.

“The storylines really resonated. Last year, we launched Til Tok around March Mandess and it’s quickly becoming our fastest growing platform – with personality-driven content, relatable to younger audience, versus giving recaps and scores only.”

What’s ahead during March Madness for the NCAA’s social and digital team? Dion talks about ramping up their efforts, prior to Selection Sunday and beyond.

“This is the largest social team we’ve ever had. We will embed ourselves with selection committee for a week. And, we’ll have a war room with 15 folks working with first and second round games, with a live set, so Autumn can directly talk to major performers. For the two regionals, we are deploying creative teams to each, for all-angle creative work. We’ve never done that before.

In Dallas, we are set to tell the stories of the Division I, II and III teams from so many digital angles. It’s going to be a fantastic experience, both for our team and especially for the particpants and the fans.”
 

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