The Assistants

When I started at SLU we had 13 sports…when I left there were 35 varsity sports. I started with just me in the office and got tons of help typing play by play and other things at games from secretary Beth Cheney. The other secretaries at the PR office, Rita Hewlitt and Mary Hought helped out with the Monday mailings and running some of the various things we sent out on the ditto machine.

At some point, probably six or seven years into my career, we started bringing in interns or graduate assistants to help with the coverage load. All were very personable kids and most were very good at what they did. Beth Burr Dossantos, Laura Fawcett, Jamie Weir Baldwin, Susan Hershberg, Lauren Zimmerman, Jennie Girard, Meg Bernier Keniston, Mike DiTullio and Aaron Todd  were among my All-Stars. Beth and Laura spent a year in Canton before moving on to full-time positions. Beth was associate director of media relations at the University of North Dakota, Director of Public Relations for the ECAC and assistant commissioner for communications for the Northern Sun conference. Laura was planning to come back for a second year at SLU, but during the ECAC summer convention in Saratoga got a call from the Air Force Academy and went there as an assistant sports information director and was director of publications and on line services at the US Figure Skating Association before moving on to her current position as senior manager of digital media and content strategy at USA Volleyball. Jamie did spend two years at SLU before moving on to become assistant SID at Harvard. She has been a director of athletic communications at Michigan State since January of 2006 and has been hockey SID for the Spartans since her arrival in Lansing. Michigan State is currently number one in the pair-wise rankings for hockey. Susan came to us from Burlington and had the classic experience of a Bob Monahan phone call. I was out of the office and Bob, who sometimes spoke like he had a mouth full of marbles and had no filter when it came to language. Susan kind of sheepishly reported to be that some guy called, she didn’t get his name, but he sure used I lot of F-bombs. I knew right away it was Mono. Lauren followed Susan and was one of the first, if not the first, to experience the cubicles in the new office part of the Augsbury Center. The sports information office was established in the former swim coaches office when I moved from University Communications to Athletic

Jennie became one of my first full-time assistants when Margie Strait found the funds to elevate her position to full time in the summer of 2012. She is now working on her own as a “Content Alchemist/Graphic Designer/Coach/Strategist and is very good at what she does. Meg Bernier Kenniston was grad assistant from 2007-2009 while earning her master’s degree in educational leadership. She went on to be a dean of undergraduate admissions at Clarkson and PR coordinator at SUNY Canton before returning to SLU in 2018 to join the communications staff in a variety of roles. She has been Executive Director of Content Strategy at Hamilton College since 2022. Mike DiTullio spent a couple of seasons with us as a grad assistant and has had a long and successful career as an English Teacher in the Webster, NY school system. Aaron stepped up when one of the associate directors left at mid-year and did a great job. He went on to become SID at Bates College, spent a year as SID at Merrimack College, was a gaming industry reporter and worked for the Brown Sports Foundation as marketing and communications manager. He then spent six years as managing editor of Casino City, a gaming industry publication, before returning to St. Lawrence as my successor, renamed the Assistant Athletic Director for Communications and Marketing, in June of 2016. He is now Associate Director for Outreach at SLU.

Those are my All-Stars, but there were others in between who also made significant contributions to the SLU athletic program and helped me cover the ever-growing St. Lawrence athletics program.

And then there are the full-time assistants. Joe Keniston, Ken Baker, Jill Olsen Guise and Beth Spadaccini Mobley top the list. Joe was my co-director the last couple of years of my tenure and went on to become Director of Laurentian Engagement. He has an out-going personality and is great at hosting and emceeing events. Ken, who I called Big Bird (he is tall and blond) was a wizard at photoshop and like Joe, fun to play golf with. Ken went on from St. Lawrence to be SID at his alma mater, Allegheny College and then joined the staff at Robert Morris. Jill laid the groundwork for her skills in two years at SLU and then moved on to Johns Hopkins in 2006 and has been Assistant director of athletic communications for the past 19 years. Jill is also taking over my involvement in what was ECAC-SIDA and is now East-Comm. She has been the secretary of East-Comm since 2008 and she and her husband Scott hosted the 2016 workshop. Beth was a student-assistant in sports information for three years and went on to work at SUNY Canton, the Liberty League, and Cornell University before being enticed back to Canton to be assistant director of athletic media relations for almost seven years. She is now Director of Partnerships at FlipGive.

Mike Ellis joined the SLU athletic department in September of 2023 becoming the fifth or sixth person to be the SID in SLU athletic history. While Bob Williams and others handled the sports publicity in the 1950s, Dick “Fuzzy” Baldwin was the first to fit and hold the actual title of sports information director. A Burlington native, Fuzzy got his start in SLU athletics as a student when he was a hockey broadcaster. He remained at St. Lawrence after graduation and was the first official SID. There may have been someone between Fuzzy and Bernie Campanella, and I followed Bernie and Aaron Todd followed me before moving to another position at the University. In the interim between Aaron and Mike, the assistant duo of Meghan Nichols and Isaac Beckstead held the fort with the help of Andrew Kane.

When I retired in 2016 at the nice round number of 40 years, I had the longest tenure of any person in sports information at St. Lawrence. They did change my title to Director of Athletic Media Relations and then to Director of Athletic Communications. I think both title changes came in lieu of a raise! Nevertheless, it was a highly enjoyable 40-year run with a lot of memories, many of which will be chronicled here in future posts.