The College’s Athletic Department has undergone significant changes following the retirement of former Director of Sports Information, Dick Quinn, last spring. Quinn held the position since 1989, overseeing a team of student writers who documented the College’s athletic events.
Since Quinn’s retirement, the athletic department has navigated a leadership transition while reassessing how athletic content is produced and shared. Senior Associate Athletic Director for Recruitment and Sports Supervision David Lindholm is serving as the interim head of the Sports Information department while the College searches for a permanent replacement for Quinn. During this period, the department also expanded its staff, hiring two assistant directors of athletic communications, Rachel Davis and Trevor Wenners.
Since these changes in staffing, most content on the Sports Information website is now produced by Davis, Lindholm, and Wenners, rather than by students, according to Lindholm. Along with this staffing change, Sports Information adopted a more standardized format for game recaps. Recaps are now designed to be concise and consistent in length and structure to ensure equal coverage across all sports teams, according to Lindholm. “We’re trying to make sure that every team, student, athlete, and sport gets about the same type and style of coverage,” he said.
Under Quinn’s leadership, student writers were typically given more flexibility in creating article format and content, according to Atticus Ross ’27, who covered the wrestling team for Sports Information. “I was definitely given creative freedom to describe how I thought each match went,” he said. “Oftentimes, I would pick two to three matches that really summed up how the day went, and I got a lot of freedom in how I described those.”
Ross, a member of the men’s soccer team, also noted that student writers often brought perspectives shaped by their relationships with athletes, which he thought provided insight beyond statistics. “Having the student-athlete perspective … frequently asking for the inside scoop, getting a pulse on team morale — things like that are a big part of it as well,” he said.
Ross emphasized how being a sports writer allowed him to connect more deeply with the athletes across different sports. “I can really empathize with the highs and lows of the season, being there, going through it simultaneously with them, even if it’s a different sport,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for them after seeing all the effort that they go through and the community that they build.”
Despite the shift toward College-employee-written content, Davis said that students continue to play an important role in the department’s work. “There are some really great student writers here who love to help out,” Davis said. “Utilizing them has been a great help when we have these weekends where there are 15 teams possibly playing at one time.”
Davis also praised the insider perspective student contributors bring to the College’s sports coverage. “Having those student-athletes and student workers continue to help us as things are evolving has been so great,” she said. “They know all the insides of the content as well, and they’re part of the audience we want to target.”
Further changes to the Sports Information website are expected in the coming year. “Next September, the website is going to look very different than it does right now,” Lindholm said. “I hope that it emphasizes photography and social media more than our current one does, because we have unbelievable student photographers on campus.”
According to Davis, the department hopes to hire a permanent director by the end of the month. With new leadership in place, department employees hope to arrive at a balance between professional staff and student contributions to Sports Information. “There’s still a bunch of sports that are written by students, and we’re looking to expand that,” Lindholm said. “I think that’s the tricky thing that the new director will have to figure out.”
