The importance of the sports information department

Sports

By georgetonian on February 25, 2022 • ( 2 Comments )

By: Bethani Blair, Staff Writer

Student-athletes make up most of the Georgetown’s campus, yet often they don’t know everything about how their games come to be. Yes, of course their coach schedules the games, and it goes on the website and social media posts updates, but who is behind all of this? Enter the sports information department.

In my first semester at Georgetown, I started a job under the previous sports information director to help run the athletics social media. I honestly had little to no clue what I was signing up for. In this position, I found so much more in athletics than I had ever thought of before.

As a liaison between the public and the athletics department, the sports information department helps schedule all press conferences, runs all social media and the athletics website, runs all the live streaming of home games and runs the score table. The department also creates a schedule of the game, not knowing what will happen in actual game play. In addition, they set up the press box and all the stats, having received a correct roster from the coach and then finally run the game itself. For events like Homecoming, the department adds the responsibilities of communicating with main campus about all homecoming court nominees, figuring out who to sing the national anthem, deciding which alumni will be honored, knowing what programs will be at the game, and more.

In helping the sports information department, I have been able to see all this firsthand. While I have had little experience in athletics before this position, it has also shown more communication efforts than expected. By invitation of the department, multiple stations were able to cover the press conference of Chris Oliver, the new football coach from Lindsey Wilson. In addition, the department was able to live stream this event through use of social media. In the case of the latest senior day of cheer, women’s and men’s basketball, and dance, the department was able to help honor Ken Davis, class of ’71, and honor all of respective teams’ seniors.

As the athletics department itself never rests, the sports information department never rests. As social media is a constant, 24/7 form of communication, the department constantly receives feedback from the public through the form of likes, comments, direct messages, etc. It must also manage all the workers who run and cover the Tigers’ games (shoutout to all the student-workers in athletics). For a regular football game, that means an announcer, a few people to work the live stream, a stats caller, a stats inputter, a social media person, a photographer, a scoreboard person, someone to control the music and many more.

To me, there is a beauty in this department because of the busyness and the hard-working people that you get to meet. Connecting with coaches, athletes, administration, community members and so many more is something that is hard to get anywhere else. So the next time you go to a game/event, please notice the people that are there and who make that event work and run smoothly and thank them for all they do.

Categories: Sports

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