Plugging the alma mater again...

So, to my readers who are fellow Messiah alums and sports fans, are you intrigued by this: http://www.messiah.edu/athletics/. (Note - presumably if you click that link after noon on Thursday it won't necessarily be as intriguing, but you'll notice a significant change if you've ever been to the Messiah athletics site before).

I am very intrigued by it, and also rather excited. One of my key frustrations as a devotee of the Messiah athletics program through out the years was that I felt that, despite having one of the premier D-III athletic programs around, the athletic department did a relatively poor job of promoting itself and of getting information out to the public regarding the various teams. The biggest reason for this was poor staffing. The conference membership has shifted in the last couple years, so I'm not sure if this would still be the case or not, but as of 2 years ago, Messiah was the only school in the entire MAC (both Commonwealth and Freedom) that did not have full-time Sports Information Director. SID responsibilites fell to Scott Frey, the head coach of the women's soccer team. Now, I certainly have nothing against Coach Frey, he's a terrific coach and I'm sure he performed the SID duties to the best of his abilities, but the reality is that he was given the responsibilities of essentially 2 full-time positions. And his primary duty was as the women's soccer coach, so I'm sure that's where his time went when the choice had to be made. And therefore, Messiah athletics was left sorely lacking in the public relations/marketing/information distribution department.

Messiah finally rectified that situation at the beginning of the year, hiring an assistant athletics director to be in charge of PR/marketing/sports information, and the impact was noticed almost immediately. The frequency of updates increased across all of the various teams, the quality of information available increased, and much of the site got a new, more attractive and functional look. I can only assume that tomorrow's unveiling is the next big step in that move, and I'm pumped about it.

I've stated in previous entries that I believe that Messiah's athletes provide the school with some of the best PR it could ever ask for, so it was always perplexing to me why the college continued to fail dismally in terms of promoting the athletics program. Let's be clear, I'm not talking about chest thumping/look at us kind of promotion. I'm just simply talking about making a commitment to providing a quality, updated web presence, and in getting appropriate information out to the local media. It's really an investment in the existing fanbase as much as anything else. I'm very happy to see the move in that direction.