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COSIDA CAPITAL ONE TEACHABLE TUESDAY WEBINAR: KNOW YOUR ROLE

October 29, 2019

CLARK TEUSCHER: Good afternoon, and welcome to today's CoSIDA Capital One Continuing Education Teachable Tuesday Webinar. Today's topic is Knowing your role. I'm Clark Teuscher and, sports information director at North Central College, and the moderator for today's discussion.

Before we begin, we would like to say a quick thank you to two corporate partners, Capital One and ASAP Sports. Capital One is the presenting sponsor of our continuing education and professional development series, while ASAP Sports provides the full official transcript of each monthly webinar.

As a reminder, the webinar and the ASAP Sports transcript will be posted later today in CoSIDA Connect our membership's online community. Please look for the links in the connect resource library off the main page.

During today's webinar you can ask your questions live to the presenters. Please use the chat box you'll find on the right side of portal. If you have questions for our presenters, please know that we will save time at the end of this webinar to address them. Feel free to send them to us now, and we'll get to them as soon as is appropriate.

Our presenters today are Steve Sheridan, the athletics communication director at Union College, and Rob DeVita, director of athletic communications at St. Francis College, Brooklyn.

Our first presenter today is Steve Sheridan. Steve has a bit of a unique setup at Union with Division I and Division III sports to cover, and he's here to share how they address that and other issues within their department.

Steve?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Thanks, Clark. As Clark said, I'm from Union College, so we have an interview setup here. We have our 24 Division III sports, and we also have two sports men's and women's hockey, that are at the Division I level. So there is a bit of a different setup for us here in that capacity because the hockey programs have a little more demand than some of our programs do.

So I think one of the things we try to handle in terms of knowing our staff, during the winter season, which for hockey unfortunately is a very long season. It starts the end of September and goes all the way until March and potentially after that.

We have our -- my associate director who handles men's hockey; we have our intern that handles women's hockey. Our winter season we're kind of on our own, each doing our own sport. They're doing the two hockeys and I'm taking care of basketball. I do a lot of track and the swimming and those separate sports as well. We're really kind of doing our own things.

During the fall and the spring seasons we do much more kind of compartmentalizing what we do as a department. We're basically at the games for most of the different teams, but we kind of -- we do a lot more of I handle social media for pretty much every team. My associate who is very good a photography, he handles all the photography for all the different teams. He handles the scheduling for work studies for all the teams.

It's basically just myself and my associate director. We are the two full-time people in our office. We are a pretty small office, like most Division III schools are. We have an intern as well that's about 20 hours a week, so she is pretty limited kind of in what she can do, especially during hockey season when she's handling women's hockey.

We give her basically one or two sports during the fall and spring to get her hours in and make sure she's still engaged in what we're doing. For myself and my associate, it can be a struggle sometimes to handle all the different teams. We got 24 Division III teams and two Division I teams.

One of the things we try to keep all the Division III teams happy as best we can. Sometimes we have coaches that come into my office and one of the things they say a lot to me is, I know we're not hockey, but...

So we know that kind of hockey is a different level in terms of coverage, in terms of social media interaction, and things like that, but we do our best to handle the rest of those Division III teams.

I think we do a pretty good job of knowing where our strengths are at. I think I do a relatively good job at social media with graphics and things along those lines. My assistant does a have good job at photography and scheduling work studies and doing all those type of things to keep our operation running on a daily basis.

In terms of knowing our staff, we utilize student workers a lot. I think a lot of schools are in that same boat where you have to utilize student workers to get things done. This year with NCAA live stats for soccer especially, we took three or four student workers at the start of the year and said, Hey, you guys know soccer? Let's sit down and do this.

By midway through the season we were leaving them alone because we had football and hockey and volleyball at the same time and couldn't be in that many places. So we had students that were running stats for those games, and video for those games, doing the PA for those games. They were essentially an their own. It's something that's a little scary is as an SID when you have an event going on and you know there are no staff members are there from your department.

But think you have to do the best you can to kind of get them to be able to succeed and put them in the best position in order to succeed. Training students is something that's integral, and I think every school should take advantage of that.

For us, we have work studies, which is nice, where we have them assigned to us. At my previous job we tried to find some athletes that were interested in helping out, whether it was their own sport or another sport when they're off during the school year.

I think that's something you really have to be involved with and using hiring managers to get those students, whether they're athletes or not. They're interested. I think that's half the battle. To assign a student to a game and they don't want to be there, the work is going to show that.

So you need to find people that know the sport, want to be there, that take pride in their role. I think if you can do that for your workers, I think the students do a very good job and tend to respond to that.

We're a small staff. We rely on students a lot. Have some outside help. We are lucky to be the capital region here in New York where there are a lot of SIDs in the area, a lot of schools in the area. We help each other out quite a bit. So obviously there is outside help that's available some of those days as well. You kind of just do what you can and figure it out from there.

So in terms of our staff, that's kind of how we operate. It's a small Division III school. We don't have a ton of full-time people in our office. It's kind of how it goes in most Division III schools, and I know Division I, a little bit different. Had some experience at D-1 and D-2. Division I schools still tend to have more people in the office that can help out during the day.

Obviously we can speak to that as well.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Steve, quick question that's come in from an attendee here. You mentioned the discussion about Division I versus Division III athletics within the same department. For someone in Division III that a lot schools have pretty sizable junior varsity programming, how would you recommend somebody handle a discussion from a coach who is asking about why they're not the provision same level of coverage for some of the junior varsity athletics?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Yeah, junior varsity is tricky. I mean, we don't deal with that at Union. We have very large rosters with our teams, but don't really have, I think with the exception of maybe the baseball team plays a couple junior varsity games. But at my last job we had a soccer team that had 50 players on it for a couple years. Junior varsity was kind of on their own.

I think if you have the people to staff those games, to either be there and take stats or photos or even just do a write-up, obviously that's great. But I think that's a discussion you probably want to have with your coach and potentially athletic director, too.

Because if these aren't varsity games, if they're not counting for anything for lack of a better term, I think you want to put yourself in a position where you're promoting the teams the best you can.

If you're doing stuff with junior varsity sports that is taking away from time you could be doing things with other teams, that's a negative, in my opinion at least. I think that's something that a coach has to talk with you about. That's more of a higher up decision than an SID.

I think if you want to do that on your own, that's great, but you shouldn't be taking away from time spent on other varsity teams in my opinion.

CLARK TEUSCHER: And with regard to the training of student staff, do you have kind of a set form that that takes? Do you start them on certain responsibilities right away and build up to other things? How does that go?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Yeah, I mean, we have a staff of I think 18 work study students that we have in our office. We have some of them that do office hours and help with programs and things like that.

Basically at the start of the year we have them fill out and form and say, What are you interested in? If you're interested in just working game days, okay that's great. What sports do you want to cover? We want to put you on something you're interested and not just doing it just for the money.

In terms of stats, you know, at the start of the year we said, Hey, you have an interest in soccer, you know soccer. Are you interested in trying to do this? In that case it was just a matter of bringing them into the office. Obviously soccer in the past is a little easier having students do stats for soccer because it was not quite as intensive as it is now with the live stats. But it's still something where we brought them in, gave them a couple games. First game or two we're there with them to look over the shoulder a little bit. Make sure they're doing a good job. After that, once we're comfortable with them, we just kind of let them go on their own. A lot of time they like doing that. They take pride in being able to be at the game by themselves and not have someone looking over their shoulders.

If you instill the confidence that they can do it and the pride they can take in doing something on their own, I think a lot of students really take that initiative and try to do things well.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Sounds great. Thank you very much, Steve.

Rob DeVita's staff at St. Francis Brooklyn takes on several different forms. He's here to discuss how they get the most out their resources.

ROB DEVITA: Sure. Thanks Clark. So I'm Rob DeVita director of athletic communications at St. Francis College, Brooklyn. Essentially we have 21 Division I athletic programs, 17 competing in the Northeast Conference, in the NEC. Our department is broken up with myself, who's a full time employee, our new media coordinator, Luis Valez (phonetic). He's been tremendous. He's a full time employee. And then we have a part-time athletic communications assistant, and we have a graduate assistant, which is new role as of September.

I've been here for a little over a year now, and over my time I've seen our athletic communications department grow quite tremendously. When I first started it was just myself and Luis, our new media coordinator, as full time staffers. From there, we were able to add an athletic communications assistant, part time, who just handles traditional SID work.

And then over this summer we were granted a graduate assistants, which has been tremendous. He started with us in September, which has been a tremendous addition as well.

So just want to be clear. I'm the SID for men's basketball, men's soccer, women's volleyball, men's water polo, women's water polo, men's golf, women's golf, and bowling. And from there, I have broken up SID responsibilities accordingly based on our staff and what they felt comfortable with.

Another thing to be clear on, with us at St. Francis, we don't just cover our sports. We cover all sports within the athletic department. I know myself I'm at every single home event when I can be as long as I am not on the road traveling with men's basketball and competing in post-season championships.

For us, we are big on laying the foundation of what it is that we wanted to do here at St. Francis. Myself and Luis are both alums of the college, so we wanted to represent the college to the best of our abilities.

With that being said, at the forefront for us is social media, graphic design, creative video. Those components have I think set us apart from some of our competitors within Division I, within our realm, within or conference.

Biggest thing for me is having a clean look on social media. With that being said, I handle all of our graphic design with the help of our new media coordinator, and we have been able to teach our athletic communications assistant and graduate assistant how to use PhotoShop. So that has taken the load off myself and our new media coordinator.

I know graphics are time consuming, but we make all of our from scratch from PhotoShop. I take pride in that. I think it's really key to have a clean, sleek look on social media, and a look it is really your own - and we own it. All of our graphics are our own. Not writing off any third party services that are out there. They're great.

It's just that I have a passion for graphic design, and I've learned that members of my staff now also have a passion for it. So with that being said, we are able to utilize those skills to put our best foot forward in those areas.

To be quite honest, over the past year I've been here, I think we've transformed our look on social media immensely. That has been tremendous thing to see. I've worked elsewhere, and whether it's been professional athletics, professional sports, or college athletics, I think our look is different. We definitely brand ourselves appropriately, and that was a big thing for me when I got here in August of 2018; that was something that was at the forefront.

So our media coordinator who I mentioned is a full time position, he handles day-to-day our broadcasting production with NEC Front Row, the online platform of the Northeast Conference. He staffs that and he oversees all of our webstreams. He has a great crew of student workers. We call ourselves the (indiscernible) sports network. A crew of about 12 student workers that are interchangeable.

I oversee them as a whole, but he really gets his hands dirty training all the student workers how to produce, direct, work graphics, manage, and work cameras. Starting to slowly teach our students how to do play-by-play, but we are currently outsourcing that to professionals, freelancers, for play-by-play, which has been great too, because those outsiders, freelancers, professionals at play-by-play and color commentary have been able to come in and teach our students how to do things on air to further our broadcast.

Our new media coordinator has a great passion for creative video. It's something that we learned as -- I learned from working with him that that's what he wants to be passionate about, that's what he loves. So he's been pretty much essential to me creating creative content, creative video, for social media and our website, which has been great.

It just added to what we were doing as an athletic communications department and our social media initiatives. And when say creative content, it's anything from creative videos. We put out some stuff today from basketball photo day. About a minute on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. We hit all platforms with that.

Some other things that he does is just basic interviews. Again, we had our tip-off dinner for basketball the other night and he put together a great interview package. And all throughout the year we're coming up with different ideas. We did a great feature over the summer of a men's soccer alum, Vincent Bezecourt, who currently plays for the New York Red Bulls. So him and I collaborated to put that project together.

I pitched the idea to him, he loved it, ran with it, and made it come to life. So we were able to get behind-the-scenes access at the New York Red Bulls training facility, and we also went to a game where we got B roll footage and interviewed him. That's huge for us, because we're putting it out there. We're in the New York City market and we're showing that a student-athlete from St. Francis went on to be a professional athlete, played on the Red Bull's first team and on their second team, their USL team. So that was a big project that we had.

Again, Luis, he's been great, a huge addition for our staff being able to oversee our broadcast productions and creative content. Another thing he does for us that has been huge because he actually taught me how to do this, is he shoots photograph. I learned from him our how to do that.

Both us shoot a number of our events throughout the year. We have a great photographer that works with us. Does all our head shots and shoots action photos for some of our bigger games. He's been tremendous. When we're covering sports throughout the year, for me, it's huge to have photos from the games that were just played when I'm using a score update graphic or adding a recap.

I know that's kind of difficult and sometimes it's a little unrealistic, but we do our best to shoot photos for almost all of our home contests. It's tough. We have up to 80 home events a year, and we are a bit of a smaller staff for Division I. But if we're going to get three to five photos that we can use to use keep our website and social media graphics fresh, we do our best to do that.

For our athletic communications assistant, he fills traditional SID roles. He's a sport content for a number of specific sports, but he is a part time worker. He works about a 1000 hours a year. That's been great. He is passionate in broadcast, so I've let him call play-by-play for a number of events.

Another thing he's passionate about is public address announcing, so I've been able to hand him PA scripts. I let him run with it, create his own scripts, and he announces a number our games on the PA side.

The biggest thing for me I think as the lead in our athletic communications department is playing to my staff's strength and their passions. Like I said, our new media coordinator's passion is creative, so I've let him run with creative. You can feel his energy in his content that he puts out there because he is so passionate about it.

Our athletic communications assistant, again, he's passionate in broadcasting and public address announcing. I've let him kind of run with that so that he could - while he's fulfilling his role as an SID, he's also able to put his best foot forward in something he wants to further his career in, and that's becoming a broadcaster.

As for our graduate assistants role, that's brand new for us. Our GA started last month in September. We're getting him acclimated. It's been a little bit over a month now. I've seen that he's had a passion for creative and broadcast, so I let him kind of work hand in hand with our new media coordinator producing our broadcast, as well as creating creative videos and creative content for social media and our website, while he's also serving as sport contact for specific sports as a SID.

Right now we have him working with men's and women's swimming and diving, as well as men's volleyball and cross country and track and field just to get his feet wet in that area. He worked within the athletic department, but he wasn't in the athletic communications office when he was in college. He's had a great deal of experience working with video, so we had a need there and we brought him on. Now it's all about getting him acclimated as an SID.

The biggest thing for us is having our whole department buy into the plan that I laid out when I got here. Like I said, the biggest thing for us is having a clean look on all platforms of social media and our website. A big thing for me is graphic design. Graphics and creative is huge. All of our student-athletes are on their phones, especially in today's day and age. We want to be able to promote them and our programs to the best of our abilities.

We want it to look good and we want the kids to feel good about themselves. We want the student-athletes to feel good about themselves. After a game they can look up and find photos of themselves or graphics or read a recap or feature story on them.

So as you all know, it's a lot that goes into this, a lot to being an SID and making an athletic communications department work. For us, where I think we found success is playing to our department's strengths, all of our staffer's strengths. I would say that would be the biggest thing for us.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Rob, thank you very much. Couple questions here.

ROB DEVITA: Sure.

CLARK TEUSCHER: You mentioned you just added the graduate assistant position. How did that come about? Was that something that you had an application for?

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, I mean, I think it was pretty nice, because at St. Francis, at least to my knowledge, there were never graduate assistants before in the athletic department. I put in a proposal for it I want to say February of last year because we needed some extra hands. They ran it. I put a proposal together, I sent it up the chain to my deputy AD, and then my AD, and, you know, fast forward to July.

It was approved and we got our hands dirty. Posted it an CoSIDA a bunch of times and got a great candidate in here. We're molding him. He's a former student-athlete so he knows what the students want to see. I think sometimes it's good to have a former student-athlete working within the athletic communications office because he was in it. He knows what they want.

So he's been great. It's a great thing that administration really was there for us and saw the mission that was that we put out there for ourselves. They saw that we needed it and gave it to us. That was amazing.

CLARK TEUSCHER: In that proposal, what was kind of the main case that you made?

ROB DEVITA: Right. So I laid out exactly what it is that we have been doing over my first year at St. Francis. Just basically laid everything out from A to Z, what it takes to be an SID. Last year I was pretty much the SID for 18 of our 19 sports minus women's basketball, and then we added two sports. We added women's soccer and men's volleyball, which women's soccer began this fall, and men's volleyball we begin in the winter. We're playing pre-season matches right now.

With the addition of two sports plus all that we did the first year here, I made the case that it was time to add another position within the department. They felt like it made sense.

CLARK TEUSCHER: And with regards to the freelance broadcasting help you have, are you responsible for staffing that?

ROB DEVITA: That's correct, yes. I staff all of our events' play-by-play and color commentary. We do play-by-play and color for men's and women's basketball for I would say 99% of the games based on availability of our people.

For soccer I do my best to have play-by-play and color. For volleyball we have play-by-play for ever match. Water polo we have play-by-play for every match.

We stream swimming. Right now we're just streaming it one or two cameras, but we're looking into adding a play-by-play person for that, but I handle all the staffing.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Okay, thank you very much. We'll ask Steve to come back up here and we'll finish with a little bit of a Q and A.

Steve, we've heard a lot about planning from both of you today. How far out does your long-term planning extend, whether it's for scheduling or training or development of staff? As a department head, what's the role of planning in its different form for you?

STEVE SHERIDAN: I mean, in terms of staffing events, we do our staffing week to week. We have a Google calendar. We have all our students fill it in with times that they can't work. We get all their class schedules at the start of every trimester to know when they can't work, and we kind of piece together the schedules from there.

We obviously try to get as many people as many hours as we can. In some cases we make jobs for people to have a second person to do this or a second person to call stats at volleyball to try to get more people involved. That's one thing we found out with students if they're not working a lot, if they're not getting a consistent effort or being there consistently, sometimes they kind of stayed away.

We have had that with a couple work study students, but for the most part we try to get them to as many games as possible and get them as many varied experiences as possible, too. We have days when we have six different home games and we have vacation, and you might have to do something you haven't done before.

So we try to get everyone as much experience as we can. We try to keep it week to week, but there is always kind of that long-term. Okay, this hockey game in December this person is not going to be here. We know we're going to have to do this. We have a bunch of games in general during December where we don't have our student workers on campus. With the trimesters they're gone from Thanksgiving to New Year's, so we have to train people for those hockey games in December.

They're Division I hockey games, so we try to run them as professionally as we can. It's kind of get everyone involved and figure out who works best in what situation from there.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Rob?

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, so to speak to his point, I staff, again, week to week. For stats, we're using NCAA live stats for everything, basketball, soccer, and volleyball. So for year one on all that, I kind of was territorial. I wanted to do it just because I wanted to first and foremost know it before I start teaching everybody else.

With that being said, I've been able to teach some of our students and the rest of my staff how do it. The biggest thing for me this year is having men's volleyball. My men's volleyball student-athletes work the table for me at women's; they work the table for me at soccer; they'll be doing some basketball games when they can since their season starts. Those student-athletes have been great and very easy to teach.

In terms of stats, I hire out sometimes for volleyball, if I'm not able to be at the match because of conflicts with other sports. For basketball, I do hire out throughout the year for stats, caller and inputter now. I have that luxury thanks to my administration to free me up on game day to do other things.

The biggest thing is now I have this men's volleyball group who has really taken to athletic communications. A few of them have even thought about they like want to change their major to communications because they've enjoyed this work. They special to me. These guys have come here, first year students, and we can make an impact and show them, look, there is a great career path in athletic communications.

In year two year here, having that group of student workers, has been a real key for me for sure.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Rob, we'll start with you for this one. In terms of contingency planning, Steve, you mentioned briefly having to plan for games when people aren't necessarily going to be there in force like the academic year.

What kind of contingency planning and what are the priorities that you fall back on if staffing kind of breaks down for an event and you have to shuffle some things around.

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, that always happens in our business. You know, first and foremost, within our department, if we're all going to be here, I'll hop -- I usually do stats for all of our games except for basketball, so I'll hop on and make sure I'm doing stats. That's a given.

If I have a need at PA, even my GA or my assistant can hop on and do that. If those options aren't there, I'm always going to be here. I know things come up, but I've only missed one home game in two years here, or a year and a half because we haven't gone through a winter and spring yet. I've only missed one.

What I do is - and I'm sure a number of SIDs know about this. I am a subscriber of the Frado list. I don't know if anybody is really familiar with that. It's a great service ran by Mark Frado. I just put out the positions that I need filled on game day and I get that to him as soon as possible. As soon as I know there is an opening that's not fillable, I send it to him and usually am always successful.

Ans especially in my area. There are a bunch of schools in the New York City area, so I have a pretty good relationship with pretty much all - if not all - the head SIDs. So if there is a student they can recommend to come in and pitch in, that's great. If they can help out, even better, or if one of their assistants can come help out, that's tremendous.

So I use my connections as a resource to be able to fill the void if there a avoid. It always happens. This weekend we have swim meet at 1:00, on Saturday, a volleyball match at 4:00, and a men's soccer game off site, off campus at 7:00 p.m.

So definitely a lot of moving parts into making a die lake that happen. And our men's volleyball student workers are playing in a full tournament this weekend, so that's perfect scenario right there. Just kind of juggling a couple different hats.

I definitely utilize services like the Frado List and using the SIDs in the area to help each other out. If they help me out, I help them out. I'm always about that. If we have that relationship with the folks in the area, I think that's huge.

I think the New York City folks really did a great job of that.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Steve?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Yeah, I think as an SID we are all kind of Jack of all trades. I pride myself on being able to do a bunch of different things. Even already this year for our hockey team I've done -- I did play-by-play for one game, color commentary for one game, I did shot chart for one game. I'm filling in tonight as the stage manager for our ESPN Plus broadcast.

So basically any time there is an open spot, decent chance I'm the one filling that spot. Depending on what the job is of course. But we rely on students. We have a good network of some former athletes that have graduated and still live in the area that we'll bring back to do hockey or basketball stats during the winter.

It's always good to have those people nearby, so that if someone doesn't show up, something happens, that you have those people to back up. I think we obviously don't have the as much up here in upstate New York, but there are a bunch of other SIDs always nearby. I think that's one of the things that's great about this field. I feel like a lot of times if you're in a pinch, if you need someone -- we have already had multiple times this year where local SIDs have gone from one school to another school to another school to try to get all these things done and try to help you out. You help them out once, they will help you out.

I think everyone wants everyone else to succeed, so I think that's a great thing about this field. You build up those relationships with other SIDs. It makes your life a lot easier and it gives you a lot more options.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Certainly. Steve, for this next question we'll start with you. Something we certainly see in Division III. Getting contacted by other parts of campus, whether it's admissions or development or anything else that is involved kind of tangentially with athletics but doesn't fall under what an SID would typically be responsible for, if they come to you asked for services or materials or anything like that, what is your approach to how you handle those kinds of requests? Do you try to be accommodating? Is there a line that's drawn? As a department head that's has got to make those decisions for not just yourself but your whole team, how did you embrace that?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Yeah, I mean, I try to be open to any request I can. I think in many ways our athletic department is an arm of the admissions office of the school. Any time the communications office, the admissions office, if they need something from us, they need these things because they want to promote our athletes and promote our school. That kind of falls very much in line with what we do at our school.

I'm in very close contact. One of the first things I did -- I've been here a year and a half. One of the first things I did was get in touch with the communications office and the social media accounts at the college and really get a good rapport with them and say, Hey, how with can we help you out? There are these things I think you guys can do to help us out, but whatever what you need from us. Whether it's a player for a spotlight they're doing, a video series of students on campus, we want to try to get as many of those athletes involved in those as possible. It makes us look good and it makes the school look good as well.

I think I try to be as open as I possibly can to helping out with photos for the school yearbook or helping out in the newspaper with writing -- not writing articles, but helping them with their articles and things like that, giving them photos for the paper.

I was last week with career services talking to them a little bit about trying to get some interns to help, some people in the college that want to learn about college athletics and communications, to go with them and try to -- reaching out to alumni relations and things like that.

I think you really can't reach out too much to people across campus. I think a lot times they appreciate that because there is a tendency of the athletic department to be in their own silo a little bit and not have that cross-campus communication.

I think you reach out, try to build those relationships, it makes your job a lot easier and also allows you to do a lot more.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Certainly. Rob, from a Division I perspective, how do you see that?

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, Steve, I completely agree with you. You have to have that rapport with the campus communications staff. That was big for me when I got here. So when I first got here -- I'm an alum of the school -- I knew our campus communications director from day one. He was Professor of mine, which was great, but he moved on and there's a brand new staff now. I had to get myself acclimated with them. I try to be as accommodating as possible.

We're such an integral part of campus life here at St. Francis College, so anything they need from us, from me, my staff, I try and do it, put it at the forefront. They're not asking every day for us to do stuff for them, but when they do come calling, I make myself available. I know I'm a part of a bigger mission than just my office, just what I do on a day in, day out basis.

I try and help them out the best that I can just because it looks really good having a student-athlete profiled, like Steve said, from the campus side of things. And if there are things that I can do to help them, like I was helping admissions with graphic design, things of that nature. Anything I can do to help, I'm always there. My staff knows they need to be available for them too when they come calling.

STEVE SHERIDAN: I think, Rob, when talking about getting into a position, like a GA position, I think if you have a visibility across campus, that makes it a lot easier to vie for those positions.

ROB DEVITA: Right.

STEVE SHERIDAN: Our president here, we have a search for a new VP of communications for the school. The president was in the first meeting and said, Why don't we have someone from athletics in this position, you know, in this search committee? I think that was a great thing. It was great idea that he's thinking about athletics because we're a part of the school's mission and what they want to accomplish.

If you can get yourself in those positions and discussions, that's certainly a great thing.

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, no, I can definitely echo that. Our president is the same way. I was on a hiring committee for a school graphic designer. That was big. It told a lot right there what they thought of the production that is coming out of the athletics department and the athletics communication department. Again, totally agree with everything you said.

CLARK TEUSCHER: All right. One final question before we wrap up today. For somebody who is coming in to a department head role for the first time, what's some of the first things you recommend this person to do?

Rob, start with you.

ROB DEVITA: Yeah, that's a good one. So I got the head role last year, so I'm a little over a year as head SID coming from a conference office. I used to work at the Mack where I was one of a couple communications directors. I reported to our assistant commissioner for media relations.

The biggest thing is you need to set goals, right, I think, and tangible goals. From day one when I got here I knew there were things I wanted to change. There were things that I wanted to look different. There were things that I knew were essential for us to stand apart from the rest of our competition.

So what I did was I made those goals feasible and attainable first and foremost. People around campus saw that I was -- not only myself, but our new media coordinator when it was just him and I, were able to put out some really quality content. It was just the two of us. I think we gained respect off that. Our work spoke for is itself.

From there, we were able to get things like a GA. We were able to hire a part time SID, which definitely helped further our mission. So I think the first thing would be set goals for yourself. Make sure you come in with a positive attitude. I know it's not every day going to be a great day. There are always things that come up, especially in this business. But you need to have a positive attitude when you're dealing with it.

For me, this is what I'm passionate about. I love what I do. I wake up every single day happy, very happy to be here and thankful for my role.

I guess one simple word. Just have goals that are attainable.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Certainly. Steve?

STEVE SHERIDAN: Yeah, I think one of the things I learned, and this is my second positions as a full time position. Last one was for ten years. One of the things I learned this time around was the first thing I did is my first week I went around to all the coaches and said, What do you guys want? The coaches, if you can keep the coaches happy, I think that makes your job a lot easier.

So kind of went around and talked to each coach and said, What do you want? Do you want a free video stream? Do you want better social media? Do you want better photography? Kind of seeing what they wanted, and from there I was able to sit down and say, Okay, this we can do, this we can do, this we might be able to do down the road, this is probably not happening.

Kind of just going back to the goals thing that you were talking about, Rob, figure out what things are feasible and what things are possible and figure out when things provide the best value to the college and the athletic department.

If coaches are asking for a better PA person at games but their games aren't being streamed, you want to figure out a way to get some things that are going to get more exposure to the college as opposed to just something that will affect a couple people.

So I think getting the coaches buy into what you want to do as well. That's a big thing as well. I had a lot of goals even before I took the position. Even going into the interview saying, you know, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this, and I think the coaches were very receptive to that, to different ideas and different ways of doing things.

I think that's one of the positives when you have a new person that comes into a position. They bring a new perspective. I think a lot of times coaches may not see that. They may just kind of keep going with the same things they've always done.

One of the things I try to do is every year, start of every year, Hey, what's one new thing I can bring to the team this year? This year we started doing posed action shots for our teams. We just had one an hour ago with women's basketball and they thought it was the greatest thing they had ever seen in their life. Took 45 minutes of our time and they said, We feel like a big time D-1 school doing this. This is so fun. This is great. They were ecstatic about doing it. I think you can see that. You see the happiness in the athletes and the way they respond to that, and that's priceless for us. That builds us a lot of goodwill with our teams because the players are happy with what we're doing.

It's always nice to get a good email from a coach or player saying, Hey, we love what you're doing. Thank you for all you do. That's the best feeling in the world.

If you have those goals and figure out what is feasible and what can best benefit your entire department, that's a huge step in the right direction.

CLARK TEUSCHER: Certainly. Very well said. I want to thank you both for participating in today's webinar. Like to thank all of the attendees for joining us as well. Very informative session today.

We also want to extend our thanks to our corporate partners, Capital One and ASAP Sports, for their continued support of our professional development series. Reminder, you can find the on-demand webinar and ASAP Sports transcript on CoSIDA Connect, our membership portal, later this afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. We are looking forward to attending all of our professional development webinars and content throughout the year. Please check COSIDA.com and our social media channels for updates and registrations. Thanks again for joining us.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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