College Sports Information Directors of America

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Lisa Champagne – New England Small College Athletic Conference, Assistant Director for Media Relations

CSC 25-Year Award

by Jeff Hodges – University of North Alabama // CSC Special Awards Chair, CSC Secretary

One of the reigning athletic communications veterans in New England, CSC 25-Year Award recipient Lisa Champagne has worked at all three NCAA divisional levels. Currently, she is concluding her seventh year as the New England Small College Athletic Conference’s (NESCAC) Assistant Director for Media Relations. Previously, Champagne served at Division I University of Vermont and at Division II St. Michael’s College and Quinnipiac University when it was a D2 institution (now a Division I school). Champagne has been involved in numerous CoSIDA/CSC committee work throughout her career, and recently headed the CSC Women (formerly WoSIDA) group of female college athletic communicators.
 
She began her career as a student assistant at her alma mater, Southern New Hampshire University (then known as New Hampshire College). She was a1994 graduate as a sport management major and was a two-sport athlete (basketball and softball). Champagne went to to receive her master's degree in business administration from Saint Michael's College in 2001.

Champagne has received numerous awards throughout her distinguished career and has worked many international sport competitions, including the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Among her honors, she received the prestigious Irving T. Marsh Award (university division) in 2013 from ECAC-SIDA (now EAST-COMM). The award, named after Irving T. Marsh, the late ECAC Service Bureau founder and director, is given annually to a university and college division sports information director who has exhibited excellence and commitment to the profession. At the time, Champagne was the seventh woman to receive the honor since its inception in 1966. In 2008, she was honored with the Zabriskie Award for Excellence by the Vermont athletic department.
 
 
You took your current position at the New England Small College Athletic Conference in 2016.  What do you like most about working in a conference office?
LC: Working in a conference office is quite different than working on campus. It took me a bit to adjust, but the things I enjoy most are connecting with different groups on the 11 campuses and learning how each campus operates while being able to witness and follow the outstanding performances in the NESCAC. I also enjoy interacting with my counterparts in the Division III conference offices around the country.
 
Before moving to a conference office in 2017, you had worked on college campuses for more than a decade. Are there things that you miss about being on a campus?
LC: I miss having the daily interaction with student-athletes. Watching them come to campus as a wide-eyed first-year student and grow over their four years and in the process learn about them as people are some of my best memories. I also miss interacting with the student workers who would help out at games. Those times spent teaching the workers how to score a game or handle other duties were special because it wasn’t about learning the details of the game at hand, it was about building relationships with people. I always strived to provide a fun atmosphere and teach some skills that the students could carry on into their professional careers after graduation.
 
You were heavily involved in the emergence of social media during your time at Vermont. How do you feel the profession has changed during your time in the business?
LC: There isn’t enough space in this Q&A to describe how the profession has changed! When I started in the profession as a student assistant at my alma mater Southern New Hampshire University (it was New Hampshire College when I attended) the internet did not exist in the way it does now. Statcrew/PrestoStats/NLS didn’t exist. We did stats by hand, called the newspapers with scores, and faxed over handwritten box scores and press releases or game summaries to the media outlets; heck, some of the weekly note packages were mailed to the media outlets.
 
As the SID at Saint Michael’s, I had 20 minutes from the end of the women’s game to the start of the men’s game (they played doubleheaders) to balance the basketball box score by hand and make sure all the stats were legible. For some reason every time Saint Michael’s hosted Bentley I could never get the box score to balance and Hall of Famer Dick Lipe would kindly let me know! ?
 
Give us some specifics about the ever-changing role and duties of a college athletic communicator position.
LC: Once the Internet exploded, with it came heightened expectations of the profession; those expectations also exploded. Then social media ramped everything up another notch. Folks in our profession have developed into a jack-of-all-trades handling everything from IT solutions, to public relations, to social media, to graphic design, to video, to stats, to crisis management and that can all happen in just a span of an hour!
 
When I began at Vermont as an assistant there were three of us handling the basic duties of the office – scoring games, writing recaps/previews -  for 18 Division I sports. By the time I left UVM there were four of us, plus an intern and an army of students. Two of the staff members were heavily involved in producing video content and we were now managing social media accounts for every sport, and webcasts, in addition to the traditional duties. The amount of content the office produced grew exponentially in the 17 years I was at Vermont due to the uptick in the 24/7 demand created by social media.
 
You have had the chance to work several national and international events (Olympic, World Cup and Special Olympics). What did those opportunities mean to you and what did you take away from them?
LC: I have been very fortunate to have worked at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, the 1999 Women’s World Cup games at Foxboro Stadium (now Gillette Stadium), and the 1995 World Special Olympic Games at Quinnipiac University where I was a graduate assistant.
 
The two biggest takeaways I have from those events are that the elite athletes at the Olympics or the World Cup are very similar to the collegiate athletes. They get nervous being interviewed and they go through the same kind of challenges while competing as the student-athletes I worked with, just at a different level. I saw an Olympic athlete win a gold medal in her last competitive Nordic skiing race and her emotional reaction was very similar to a senior being honored on Senior Day.
 
My second takeaway is that the media relations operations at those events are similar to what is happening on campus at any level. It’s just at a different scale. At the Olympics there are hundreds of media members requesting an interview with an athlete. At the Women’s World Cup, there are 100 reporters who need the halftime stats while it might be just a few individuals making an interview request or needing the stats for a game on campus. At the core, they are the same requests and responsibilities.
 
Can you single out a top experience from these events you worked at?
LC: Perhaps the best international experience was the World Special Olympics Games. New Haven, Connecticut was the host city, and Quinnipiac located near New Haven in Hamden, Connecticut was the host of the basketball games. One of the fondest memories I have from that event was seeing the players and families from all over the world display so much joy playing the games.
 
All of us working on the media relations staff were thanked over and over again by these families and coaches for providing stats and game recaps throughout the tournament. Those games were treated just like a Quinnipiac basketball game. They were so thankful for the time and effort we put into providing a keepsake to remember the experience.
 
What got you into athletics communications at the start of your career?
LC: I was a walk-on on the women’s basketball at Southern New Hampshire University (called New Hampshire College back then) as a first-year student. I was a benchwarmer the one year I “played”, but we did win the 1990-91 ECAC Division II Championship. It was during my first year I met Tom McDermott, the sports information director. He was a one-man shop covering all the sports and I was also a sport management major and knew I wanted to work in sports, just not sure how or what to do.
 
I quit basketball (and played softball for three years) and spoke with Tom about volunteering my time as I learned more and more about his role in the athletic department. I worked for him my final three years as a student, and he gave me a great foundation of skills to begin my journey in this career. I am forever grateful that he invested time in teaching me and helping me start down this career path.
 
Who are the people that have been influential in helping you reach 25 years in the profession?
LC: Phew! There are a lot of folks who have helped me along the way. In this business you have to rely on a lot of people to get your job done, whether it’s a fellow SID to get you stats from a road game, your students to help staff the scorers table or web broadcast, or a colleague who is a good friend that you need to bounce ideas off of or call to work through a challenge.
 
I consider the folks who gave me a start at my stops along the way as the most influential in my career. As I mentioned, Tom McDermott gave me my start and taught me the fundamentals and introduced me to this crazy profession. It is amazing to think back to his office that had a typewriter and barely fit the both of us at the same time and see where I am 25-plus years later!
 
After graduation, I connected with Bill Chaves, currently the Athletic Director at the University of North Dakota, through an internship at the Nutmeg State Games in Connecticut. After working with Bill for a week he offered me a GA position at Quinnipiac (then College) where he was a one-man SID shop for the then Division II school, and he allowed me to develop and improve my SID skills.
 
When my graduate assistant position was up at Quinnipiac, I was fortunate to land my first full-time SID job at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont another Division II school that played in the same league as Quinnipiac. It was a case of who you knew that helped me get that position. I was taking over for a well-respected SID in Chris Kenny (now the Athletic Director at Saint Michael’s). Chris had moved into an assistant AD role and hired me as his replacement. Although I only worked at SMC for a couple of years it was one of the best learning experiences I had in this profession as a one-person office for 21 sports and thanks to Chris’ belief in me.
 
I had always aspired to work at the Division I level and got that opportunity to join the staff at the University of Vermont and spent 17 years there as an assistant and then director. Gordon Woodworth hired me and gave me a ton of responsibility. I consider them all my mentors and am thankful to have crossed paths with these individuals. They all gave a woman an opportunity to learn and grow in this field when women working in the industry wasn’t the norm.
 
And now, I am a member of a three-person NESCAC Conference Office that is all women. Executive Director Andrea Savage and Associate Director Adele Burk have been great influences on me in my last seven years at the conference and are fantastic colleagues.