Across the nation, whether it’s Trinity alumni, families or interested students and faculty, there are people invested in sports at Trinity. To stay up to date, fans may look at Trinity Athletics’ website, social media accounts or watch the games live on the Tiger Network, which is all managed by Trinity’s Sports Information Department.
“Nobody really knows what a sports information director does, so when I’ve told people what I do over the years my wife then comes in and explains it for them, which is, ‘He watches sports for a living,’” Justin Parker, who has been the Sports Information Director at Trinity since 2000, said. “It’s updating the website, media relations, covering games, keeping stats at games, photography and videography.”
The SID’s job is multifaceted and includes multiple responsibilities, each one a different method for people to keep current with Trinity sports. While the mission is clear, the job description has changed over the years.
“Obviously the media has changed so much in the last 25 years particularly, but when I started, we wanted to make sure we got in the newspaper locally,” Parker said. “We wanted to make sure we were the top priority, and the best way to do that was to create a website that we could be proud of, and that we could get our stories out the way we wanted to.”
The Sports Information Department has gone all in to focus on the official Trinity Athletics website. The website features a tab for every team, with recaps and photos from every event or game Trinity participates in. It also has the schedules and rosters of each team, with links to live statistics and the broadcast. To enhance the website, Trinity even created a new position in the department.
“I fit the mold with what they were trying to do with the new position at Trinity, so Justin called me and asked if I wanted to be the first assistant athletic director for multimedia,” Peyton Thibault, who is in his second year with the Sports Information Department, said. “The way we approached it was trying to figure out what’s the bare minimum we’re going to offer to every sport and how are we going to be able to maintain that.”
Thibault continued, “Last year all we provided was in game photography, media days, win graphics, game day graphics and player of the week graphics … Then this year we figured out how to make that sustainable.”
In order to produce the game-ready graphics and provide live statistics for every home game, the Sports Information Department leans on student workers. These students perform various tasks including recording statistics and designing graphics, while also freeing up the staff to focus on other aspects of their job.
“Next year we will have 11 student graphic designers, around 20 photographers and four or five student videographers,” Thibault said. “The future vision is that eventually all the graphical content is being made by students, and that allows me to focus on video content.”
Another unmentioned detail of the Sports Information Department is the team dynamic of the office. The team consists of three full-time staff members: Parker, Thibault and Garrett Landin, the assistant athletic director for sports communication.
“We’ve really found a great work flow in terms of who works what events, who writes, and we always help each other out,” Landin said. “Peyton and I are 24, 25, so we don’t have any kids. Justin has kids and we want him to spend as much time with his family as he can. Take tonight for example: I’m working a baseball game with students, and Justin can be with his kids on spring break.“
Landin’s sentiment was shared by Justin Parker. “I’ve never been anywhere else, but just from the things I hear, whether it’s complaints from other SIDs about the work situation they’re in, or talking to other people about the work situations they’re in, I think it’s pretty unique what we have,” Parker said.
The people in Trinity’s Sports Information Department work together to develop a program that spotlights the university’s athletes and their achievements, while adapting to changing media landscapes at the same time. Without their efforts, Trinity athletics would look much different.
