College Sports Information Directors of America

 
 

For the month of April, CSC continues to highlight its members through the CSC Women to Watch series. Kadija Dickens has this month’s spotlight as she navigates her ninth year at Augusta University. Augusta is a NCAA Division II institution located in August, Georgia, the state’s second-oldest and second-largest city. Augusta competes in the Peach Belt Conference.
 
Dickens joined the sports information office by taking an interim role for her current position in 2019. Prior to that, she was an assistant volleyball coach for the Jaguars for six seasons, helping the team improve to a status where 20-plus win seasons became the standard.
 
A standout student-athlete, Dickens played volleyball at Wake Forest University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and also went on to play professionally in Europe. She went to graduate school at Georgia Southern University, where she earned two master’s degrees in both kinesiology and exercise science as well as higher education/higher education administration.
 
 
What has been the most rewarding part of working at Augusta?
KD: I really like it here. I played college athletics in a Division I environment, at Wake Forest. So coming into a Division II school, the environment’s a lot different. You have closer relationships with the players. So for me getting to highlight those players, building those relationships, actually getting to know people in-depth, that's rewarding for me.
 
In a bigger institution, yes, you're highlighting those players but there's a lot more that goes into that. Here, if something as simple as an athlete’s bio is wrong or if they want something added to their bio, [they] stop by the office and say, ‘Hey, can you add this to my bio because it'll look good on my resume?’ And I gladly do so.
 
Something that I really enjoy here is our really positive work culture. I have two kids, our AD has two kids … and we just have that kind of family environment. It’s just a positive vibe to work in. I am fortunate as I don't think that you necessarily find that in a lot of places. As you know [with] working in athletics, there's really high rates of attrition and high turnover. I think that here, we've created an environment where that's not necessarily the case, people enjoy coming to work and they enjoy being here.
 
What is the most challenging part of your position?
KD: A lack of resources is always one, yes. But when I say resource, I think everybody hits a wall financially a little bit with things that you want to be able to do as opposed to things that you can do. That's everyone. I think that Division II sports are challenging in general. Like I said, there is an expectation - or at least here there is - an expectation of excellence. And that's always kind of hard to meet because of the demand … especially at Augusta … we are the only university in this community, the only “show” in town. There's Paine College, which is a small HBCU that has 350 students. But Augusta University is the town. And in a lot of places, that's not the case. But here, we're very embedded and very connected to our community in the good and bad sense. I think that's a challenge because whatever we do represents the entire community of Augusta, differently than if we were just a little small school off-shoot.
 
 
Prior to doing media relations, you were an assistant volleyball coach at Augusta. Was coaching something you always wanted to do?
KD: I think I'm a natural coach. I build relationships well. Players who have me will say I'm the bluntest nicest person you'll ever meet! They're like, ‘You never hurt my feelings but you’ll say something was terrible if it was terrible.’ And they kind of just laugh at it.
 
Coaching for me, it's very natural. I'm a people person. I am ultra-competitive. So getting the idea of building players from one place as I meet them and growing them from that one place to the next is very natural [and] easy. I like that part of it. When I first started coaching, I was coaching men's volleyball which was a little different … but I still liked [connecting with players]. And that's one of the things that when I stepped out of coaching, I was afraid that I was going to miss the player interaction. But in this job in a Division II setting, I still get to interact with players all the time.
 
What was your experience like coaching at Augusta? You had some pretty successful teams, winning north of 20 games in multiple seasons.
KD: It was fun. When I first got here, the program was not as successful as it had been. The part that I enjoyed the most was building the program (up) from that to where it was until where it was when I left … being a part of that building process was rewarding. Getting the kind of players that will get you from point A to point B and recruiting those kids, building relationships with those kids, was rewarding. And then just knowing every day was going to be better than the last, that's fun. When you're at the point where it's only up from here and you can see it and the players are excited about it and they buy in, that was the fun part of it for me. I felt like we had a group of young student-athletes who bought into the process of getting better. Now that you win 20-something games all the time, that's the expectation, but getting to that point was a fun process for me.
 
 
How did you ultimately make the move to athletic communications?
KD: We had a some issues and situations in our media relations department at the time. The athletic director that was here asked me ‘Hey, I know you, I know your background … we’ll get someone here but I just need to step in and help for a little bit, OK?’ So I did that for a while and then it became ‘Hey, I like what you're doing. I want you to stay here. I see your future in sports administration. If that's something you want to do, the opportunity is there for you.’ So I took it … and here I am.
 
Let’s go back to your student-athlete roots. What was playing Division I volleyball at Wake Forest like?
KD: It was great. I am still ultra-close with my teammates. We were not very good when I got there … and that taught me a lot of life lessons [about just] buying into the process. I think that we are sometimes short-sighted and think ‘This is not good, I want this [instead].’ But how do we get there? Being a part of that process helped me as a coach too. I had a coach who passed recently, which is really sad, but she instilled in us from very early that you have to be as invested in the process as you are in the game. The process is more important, every rep you take is important. The game is the fun stuff but you need to be invested in the process. So I think that as a player, I loved my experience. As a SID and an administrator, I'm very different now than I was as a player, but I take those same lessons with me.
 
 
You played professional volleyball in Italy. What were some of your most memorable experiences there?
KD: I will be very honest, I didn't save any money … we traveled all the time!
 
One of the things that we enjoyed about being in Italy is the culture is very, very different as far as your relation to sport and your relation to coaches. Once you're a professional, it's not necessarily like a superior-player relationship … we're working together. You respect your coach or what [they] have to say, but this is more of a collaboration of asking, how can we be the best team?
 
Like I said, we traveled everywhere. If we had a day and a half off, we were on a train going somewhere. So I think the most memorable part for me was just being able to go places that I had never gone on a whim just because we wanted to.
 
In college, you were a wildlife training intern for a summer. How did you get involved with that?
KD: I've always loved animals. When I was in college, I was a biology and psychology major and I got into this competitive internship at [Palm Beach Zoo] where we worked on wildlife training. I was there with people from UNC, Cornell and all these [other] places. So every day I would go and my job in the mornings was — I got lucky, I didn't have to clean out cages — to make diets for these animals, and then go out and interact with them and help with the training process. So it was a really fun, crazy time. I got to interact with a lot of wild animals and with the zoo patrons. So it was weird, but very fun!
 

What challenges have you faced in this industry both as a woman and a person of color?
KD: It has been interesting, to say the least. I feel like I'm a very natural SID …  I'm kind of a nerd, I love sports, I love statistics. That to me makes sense. So when I first got into this role, I didn't really think about the fact that I was a woman or that I was a woman of color, until I started going to meetings and it's all “nerdy” white guys in the room. And I’m like ‘What’s going on? Am I the only person who is a female, and a person of color?’  And I think that it has been a big learning experience … not necessary that it makes me sad, but it makes me sad that that's the only people that feel like they fit into that niche, or that fit into going into sports information.
I want there to be a diverse population of people that are putting information out there in the world, serving as communicators. It's not necessarily like that all the time, so new perspectives and new backgrounds are very welcome. I'm not a person that feels uncomfortable in spaces often, I don't mind being the only one. But it is recognizable that I'm the only one in a lot of spaces, though.

Where do you hope to see the industry grow in terms of diversity?
KD: I would hope to see it become more and more diverse all the time. I want people to see that inside sports, that there's a lot more that goes on instead of just coaching or playing. Inside an athletic department, there's a ton of things that happen that can keep you around sports, if that's what you really want to do.

I know a lot of guys and girls right now who are stat junkies and don't know that there's a world out there for people like [them]. There is a world out [with] people that are well versed in communications or express themselves well who also love sports.
 

Favorite thing to do outside of work?
KD: [Being] outside. I’m an outside girl. I want to go to the river, be out in the yard with the boys, be outside with my dogs. If it can be outside and it's sunny, I'm out there.

Favorite sport to watch other than volleyball? And do you follow Wake Forest for that sport?
KD: Basketball, for sure. And oh yeah, I absolutely bleed gold and black!