35|35 Anniversary Website
This is the 19th installment of a series of 35 moments, milestones, and facts that will be featured throughout the 2013-14 academic year to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
Thirty-five years ago, Roy Pickerill needed only a manual typewriter and a handful of stamped envelopes to relay the latest news surrounding both Kentucky Wesleyan College and Great Lakes Valley Conference basketball.
Twenty-five years ago, Northern Kentucky University’s Rick Meyers and University of Southern Indiana’s Ray Simmons relied on a fax machine.
Fifteen years ago, SIU Edwardsville’s Eric Hess simply required an internet connection.
Today, the same audience that once waited days for a weekly release of basketball notes to arrive via snail mail now requires the same information – and more, actually – delivered to them instantly.
In 140 characters or less.
Despite the ever-changing technology used to cover GLVC athletics over the course of the past 35 years, one thing has remained a constant in the lives of the tireless sports information directors (SIDs) who seem to be wired so differently that there is never a moment where they truly logout.
That one thing is one word. Passion.
It was once penned that, “It’s a beautiful thing when a career and passion come together. Work is no longer work. You get to do what you love, and in turn, you love what you do.”
Sure it’s cliché and can be applied to about any job out there, but the saying tends to take on a new meaning when referring to the life of an SID.
And just as there have been iconic presidents, athletic directors, senior woman administrators and faculty athletic representatives in the league’s 35-year history, so too have there been these figures behind the scenes in sports information.
To truly appreciate the commitment made by these conference communicators, one must first understand how news, standings and statistics were disseminated throughout the league in its first three decades.
The GLVC did not employ a full-time SID until 2006, but part-time assistants can be traced back to the conference’s inception in 1978.
Nanette Schuhmann was serving as the publicity director at Bellarmine College (now University) when the league’s first commissioner, Louis Stout, along with Bellarmine’s Jim Spalding, a GLVC “founding father,” asked her to serve in the role.
Schuhmann was charged with conveying the league’s information to its six charter members, while also documenting conference statistics and records. She held the position until 1981 when Pickerill was asked by Stout to take over the leadership role.
At the age of 26, Pickerill had already been working for five years as a volunteer assistant in the Kentucky Wesleyan sports information department after graduating from the school in 1975.
“Nan’s position at Bellarmine changed when she received a great promotion and the demands of those added responsibilities prevented her to continue with the conference,” Pickerill said. “Mike Pollio, who was the athletic director here at Kentucky Wesleyan, recommended me since I had a great passion for Division II basketball and the extra time to devote to the GLVC, which at that point had six members in seven men’s sports.”
Pickerill spent three years overseeing the publicity of the conference until time demands associated with Kentucky Wesleyan football prompted him to resign.
Saint Joseph’s Joseph Jungblut followed Pickerill and remained in the role until 1988.
That is when Meyers stepped into the GLVC position and set a direction for the conference over the course of the next 17 years. Meyers was charged with primarily overseeing the publicity of men’s basketball, while SIDs from member institutions volunteered to manage other sports on behalf of the league office until 2006. One of those on-campus SIDs was Simmons.
Together, Meyers, Simmons and Pickerill led the charge in ensuring that GLVC basketball was promoted nationwide while other sports received the proper coverage they deserved.
“It was a challenge, especially during basketball season,” Meyers said. “SIDs volunteered to be single-sport SIDs, so they were usually ones who had a particular interest in whatever sport they took on. I organized those, but was the main SID for both men’s and women’s basketball, which made my biggest challenge during the season from November to the end of the Elite Eight.”
The GLVC partnered with Bellarmine to host the NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Elite Eights on six occasions in Louisville, Ky., and later began hosting its GLVC Championship Tournament in Evansville, Ind., between 1999 and 2007.
Luckily for Meyers, he had a local guy in Simmons who was passionate about the conference’s postseason event.
“Ray basically took ownership of the GLVC Tournament in Evansville and made it a pleasure to work every year,” Meyers said.
Simmons estimates the postseason events turned a typical 50-plus hour work week into 70 or 80 hours at least.
“Not only did I coordinate coverage of my own teams at USI, but I handled the game operations by scheduling statisticians, photographers, and the scorer’s table staff with Rick each year,” Simmons said.
But when you have that passion for your career, often times you just stop counting the hours that you put in. You do it because you love it.
Meyers felt the same way during his tenure when he punched out from his Northern Kentucky responsibilities and went home to begin covering the GLVC.
“I would work a normal week at NKU, but Thursday nights and most of the weekend was dedicated to taking care of all things GLVC basketball,” he said. “Since our league was a national power, so many were interested in everything going on within it. Not only that, but the appetite for updated information, stats, and awards was never-ending. The funny thing was, though, I loved it. I lived for Thursday and Saturday because every week was another chapter surrounding the great relationships and rivalries in the GLVC.”
Meyers contends that the principles of the sports information director position have always been the same, but the demand for information in a timely manner seems to have grown faster than the evolution of technology.
“When I started in the 1980s, I had to make a presentation to the conference with the hopes of convincing them to purchase a fax machine, so statistics and box scores could be reported back to all the conference members weekly,” he said. “Ten years later we had one of the first (and best) conference websites. Soon after that, we had all of our standings and statistics updated almost as soon as the games were completed and posted online. It was like going from the stone age to the information age over that 12-year period.”
Getting out ahead of the this thing we called the World Wide Web at the time was then-GLVC Commissioner Carl McAloose and Hess, who was relatively new to the conference communications group as SIUE entered the league in 1994. Prior to joining the GLVC, SIUE had never been affiliated with a conference, so Hess felt added pressure in disseminating information quickly to his administrators, coaches and media.
Cue that annoying dial-up internet sound…
“I started keeping a GLVC page on SIUE’s athletics website to keep standings,” Hess said. “My original intent was to keep my coaches up to date on standings and upcoming games. After doing it for a bit, Carl asked if he could designate it as the official GLVC home page and we worked from there. I realized it wasn’t the prettiest website around, but the goal was to provide as much information as possible as quickly as possible. It turned into a comprehensive website that all of the members could use and reference.”
Pickerill agreed wholeheartedly.
“Eric was a pioneer in Division II by starting the first true conference athletic website,” Pickerill said. “He also started the first NCAA Division II athletic website covering every sport and colleges across America. His creativity was amazing and astounded the nation’s athletic leaders. Other divisions have since copied his model.”
Hess noted that it took a handful of hours each day to update the website with scores and standings, but he took pride in knowing that it was helping the promotion of both his school and its conference. His contributions to the league continue today.
Despite SIUE resigning from the conference to reclassify as Division I in 2008, Hess has ensured that files from the original website can still be found by those needing information on the league from 1996-2006.
Prior to Hess’ efforts, finding historical records and other information regarding the conference were hard to come by. For some on campus, locating school records were even tougher. For Simmons specifically, thanks in large part to his longtime assistant Dan McDonnell, there are now two distinct eras at USI regarding record keeping.
“Historical information at USI and at the GLVC has been tough to come by since no one was in charge of cataloging the information,” Simmons said. “In many cases as new people rotated in and out of positions, historical information, including stats and photos, were just thrown away. At USI, Dan coined the phrase of ‘BR’ and ‘AR’ (Before Ray and After Ray). Before 1989, we have very little information about certain sports, but I have tried catalog everything that has occurred with USI Athletics ever since.”
Those efforts, along with Hess’ archived website, has also helped the league produce its first-ever GLVC Records Book, which was released in its first phase this past summer as a kickoff to the conference’s 35th anniversary celebration.
Over the last eight years, conference communications has changed dramatically from what it once was. In 2006, Tom Daeger was hired as the league’s first full-time SID and was later elevated to Associate Commissioner for Communications and Championships. Daeger stayed in his role until December 2011 when he left to become the Commissioner of the start-up Great Midwest Athletic Conference.
“The support I received from one of the country’s best collection of sports information directors, including GLVC legends Rick Meyer, Eric Hess, Roy Pickerill, Ray Simmons and countless others helped me piece together the responsibilities of the sports information role that were being outsourced, in a sense, prior to my arrival,” Daeger said. “Those individuals provided the framework of the role and it was truly a labor of love for them. I was awarded the chance to pull many responsibilities that had previously fallen on the membership into the conference office and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with so many great people in the league.”
Simmons said the hiring of a full-time conference SID relieved a tremendous burden on the institutional SID, noting that today’s demands on the job would call for more time than one person could give, regardless of the passion they exuded.
“In today’s multimedia world, the old organizational structure would fail badly,” he said.
Gone are the days of typing up the play-by-play and game recap on a manual typewriter, one which Pickerill and Simmons had to lug from their office to the court every game. Gone are the days of hand-written box scores and calling the media with results. Gone are the days of faxing box scores to the media. In Simmons’ estimation, postgame responsibilities have now gone from 45 minutes to roughly two hours for a staff of multiple people when you consider the time it takes to finalize statistics, write the recap, edit and post a photo gallery, and produce and post a coach’s interview or highlights of the game to the web. Let’s not forget about all the pregame, in-game, and postgame tweeting as well.
“The SID role has evolved dramatically with the electronic explosion that has occurred in the 25 years that I’ve been at USI,” he said. “I remember when I started in 1989, I took a briefcase with forms and a typewriter to press row. Now, Dan, (graduate assistant) ‘Alohi Bikle and myself are setting up seven different computers to do in-game scoring, live stats, manage the scoreboard, music, and live video.”
With the added responsibilities and expectations of the job over the past few years, some league members have been able to expand their sports information staff with the addition of one or two full-time employees or graduate assistants.
League members have also shown appreciation to those long-time SIDs who have volunteered so much of their time in the best interest of the conference.
Meyers was recognized for his 17 years of service to the league with
induction into the GLVC Hall of Fame in 2009. It was an unexpected and humbling honor for Meyers, who was lauded by the likes of Hess, Pickerill and Simmons for keeping the league SIDs together as one unit and providing a direction for the group. Often times sports information can be a thankless profession, largely in part because most people outside the SID circle do not see or understand the amount of hours that are put in at the desk, press row, and at home.
“I was lucky enough to be honored, but that Hall of Fame designation belongs to every SID who served along with me during those years,” Meyers said. “If it was not for all their hard work and dedication, that honor would have never happened.”
In 2012, Hess was recognized by the league with the Dr. Thomas Kearns Service Award, which is given annually to an individual or group that goes to great lengths to provide service to the conference.
“I was honored to be linked with Dr. Kearns because he had so much influence on this conference and where it has headed,” Hess said. “The evening was fabulous because I shared it with my family and got to see one of our very best student-athletes (Alicia DeShasier) inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
Pickerill was also honored in 2012 by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) for his 30-plus years of service at Kentucky Wesleyan. In 1999, he was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame – the only GLVC SID to have achieved that honor.
“Roy has always been considered the dean of the group,” Meyer said. “With his extensive involvement with the NCAA, he will probably go down as one of the best SIDs Division II has ever seen.”
But now that Kentucky Wesleyan has officially resigned as an associate member in football, next year’s 2014-15 academic season will be the first in conference history without Pickerill holding official duties related to the GLVC.
Pickerill, however, is set to enter his 21st season helping the NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Elite Eight with media coordination and hopes to see yet another GLVC team advance out of the Midwest Region. Should a league team accomplish that feat, they will return to the Ford Center in Evansville, Ind., which is also site of this year’s GLVC Championship Tournament. There Pickerill will once again be able to catch up with an old friend. Simmons and the USI staff are assuming hosting responsibilities of the Elite Eight, which is sure to be old hat for the 25-year veteran.
“Roy has been invaluable to me and every other SID in the league,” Simmons said. “He is a fountain of knowledge, especially in dealing with the inner-workings of the NCAA and the men’s basketball Elite Eight.”
The respect is mutual.
“Ray Simmons embodies professionalism to the letter,” said Pickerill. “He’s the consummate SID and a true mentor to many, not only in the league, but SIDs everywhere. His many years at Southern Indiana have provided stability to the GLVC with his vast expertise, assistance, and caring for his fellow colleagues to succeed in the sports information world.”
Pickerill also attributed much of the conference’s success to the passionate contributions of former SIDs Joe Gentry of Indianapolis, Mickey Smith of Lewis, and Steve Kratchovil of UW-Parkside, as well as current Northern Kentucky SID Don Owen and John Kean at Missouri S&T. Like Simmons, Kean has gone above and beyond the call of duty in his 24 years in the S&T sports information department, the last 10 of which have been in the GLVC. He currently serves as the second vice president for D2SIDA – the Division II arm of CoSIDA – and oversees the administration of the weekly national top 25 poll for men’s basketball.
There are others who have used the SID role as a springboard to prominent careers in intercollegiate athletics. A few current conference administrators actually started their careers as SIDs. GLVC Commissioner Jim Naumovich was Quincy’s SID from 1988-92 before an eight-year stint as the school’s athletic director – a position from which he was hired by the league office in 2000. Saint Joseph’s athletic director Bill Massoels oversaw communications efforts for the Pumas from 1991-93, while William Jewell AD Darlene Bailey was the school’s SID from 1982-83.
But when thinking about the individuals who played the largest part in promoting the GLVC over the past 35 years, the names Pickerill, Simmons, Meyers, and Hess stand out above the rest. They served as conference caretakers in their own right.
They were a family.
And despite all but Simmons having gone their separate ways, they still are.
“From that first day on July 7, 1978 to today, the last three-and-a-half decades with the GLVC have been the greatest 35 years of my career,” Pickerill said. “I have been so proud to be associated with all these first-class individuals as colleagues, but most importantly, they are my friends and family for life.”