The following article appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of NCAA Champion Magazine, featuring Union College Assistant Athletic Director, Sports Information, Eric McDowell.
Take This Job and LOVE IT
By Kyle C. Leach
Twelve wooden steps ascend at a 75-degree angle into the press box at Messa Rink in Schenectady, New York. It hangs over the northeast edge of the ice, a bird's-eye perch for sportswriters and stats collectors who turn the game's minutes into memories. On this November weekend, the Union College men's ice hockey team hosts Brown University, and in the final pregame moments, as hockey players glide across the fresh ice and slap pucks against the protective glass, a different kind of adrenalin-fueled warmup takes shape in the press box.
Like a lot of sports information directors, Eric McDowell of Union College in New York wears many hats in the athletics department.
Its inhabitants – two local newspaper writers, a blogger, four student workers, an athletics department intern, an athletics employee ready to punch statistics into her laptop, and, over in the corner, a man pumping music over the public address system – brace for a busy night. Eric McDowell, the Union assistant athletics director for sports information, is anxious, even compulsive, as he bides for face-off. He sits on the counter with one finger tapping his head. He lifts his glasses from his nose, wipes the bridge and slips them back into place. He eyes the neat piles of game notes, glossed programs and spiral-bound media guides his staff has prepared and, when a photographer grabs his copies for the night, moves quickly to realign the edges of the paper stacks.
McDowell, 55, with dark hair, eyeglasses with thin rims and thick lenses and a New England accent he has retained despite spending years on the West Coast, wears a gray suit and black tie and expects even his student workers to dress professionally for the press box. He greets everyone with a handshake or a slap on the back, depending on his familiarity with each. Most conversations in this 40-by-10-foot space take place in shouting gestures – the music is loud.
The rink lights dim. Game on.
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