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This story is part of our CSC 360 package for April 2023, to view more stories, click here.
Three Up, Three Down is a Q&A series aimed at highlighting young members of the College Sports Communicators membership, their career paths and what they enjoy in their roles on a day-to-day basis.
Young professionals spotlight: Three up, three down with Haley Fox — Assistant Sports Information Director at St. Ambrose University
by Patrick Murphy – Colorado School of Mines, Athletic Communications Coordinator // CSC Young Professionals Committee
Haley Fox is currently in the midst of her sixth year on staff at St. Ambrose University, joining the department as a graduate assistant in August of 2017 before being appointed as the full-time assistant sports information director in July of 2019.
A former radio sales assistant with iHeartMedia in Davenport, Iowa, Fox got into the industry by reaching out to St. Ambrose about graduate programs and emailed the athletic communications office asking if there was an opportunity available. Turns out, there was and after being accepted into the MBA program, Fox joined the Bees’ athletic department and after completing her graduate program, remained with SAU as the newest full-time member of the department.
Never one to shy away from any task, Fox assists with the promotion of the Bees’ 29 varsity programs by managing the department’s social media presence and has had her work recognized in several places. Her season/game highlights from SAU’s games against Division I opponents Northern Iowa and Drake finished seventh in the 2020-21 NAIA Digital Media Production Contest and her highlights from football and men’s lacrosse have been featured in the NAIA Plays of the Week.
How did your previous experience working in radio broadcasting and sales prepare you for your current role as assistant sports information director?
HF: For me, I just like helping other people do their jobs. However I can make other people’s jobs easier, that’s pretty much what I did as a radio assistant. If people needed something proofread or if a presentation needs to be made or if I needed to cover the front desk, I would just jump in and do whatever needed to be done.
I think that’s what a lot of SIDs do — they step in wherever and however they are needed. So I think it was a fairly easy and natural transition for me where I was willing to whatever and whenever to help our department be successful and achieve our goals.
Working at an NAIA school in St. Ambrose, a smaller school with a smaller staff, what do you enjoy about being in that environment?
HF: I like it because I get exposed to every single sport. I know at some bigger schools, some communications professionals have maybe one or two sports they work with.
Between my boss Brian (Thiessen), our graduate assistants and student workers, we just divide and conquer. While I focus primarily on lacrosse and soccer, I’ll still be at basketball, football, volleyball and track as well, and getting that exposure to those sports and deepening my understanding of what each of those requires when it comes to coverage and what game days look like when it comes to responsibilities and so on.
What’s one area of being an SID that you have really gotten interested in and taken steps toward improving your skills in?
HF: Photography for sure, especially in the last year. It’s hard sometimes since a good majority of the time I'm the one behind the computer doing stats for most of our sports.
I started doing photography in school and after someone who worked at the university sent me a photo of me taking photos at one of our games, it got my mind turning that I should start sharing more photos and trying new things and experiment with editing in Adobe Lightroom. I created my own Instagram page to highlight some of my favorite photos and in addition, it has helped me to build relationships with more of my student-athletes. They know that there are photos of them and how to get them and who to get them from. For example, one of our basketball student-athletes with whom I hadn’t had too much interaction with previously, said “Hello” to me one day in passing and knew who I was because they had seen my work on social media and shared it.
Bonus question: Fitness is a big part of your life, how does that help you maintain a healthy work-life balance?
HF: It’s huge! I pretty much go to the gym six days a week and instruct classes as well at Farrell’s eXtreme Bodyshaping and for me it is just such a good way to get away from everything. That’s my 45 minutes to an hour that I have for myself that I’m doing to try and get better. It is also big for my mental health, like if I have a horrible day or I’m just feeling off, I can just go down and do some kickboxing and cleanse those emotions in a healthy way. It definitely takes planning for it to work, but I’ve gotten into a routine where I show up every day, be it seven in the morning or 4:30 in the afternoon depending on the day, but I always make it a priority!
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