HILLSBORO, Ore. – Casey Grogan, assistant sports information director for Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., has been voted by his peers as the 2015-16 recipient of the Jack Sareault Award, which is presented annually to the Northwest Conference Sports Information Director of the Year.
Joining the Pacific staff as an assistant in October 2014 under then-SID Blake Timm, now the media coordinator for the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, Grogan was a critical factor in the university’s smooth changeover from Timm to new sports information director Russ Blunck during the 2015 summer. Blunck acknowledged this, declaring that "Casey has done an outstanding job this year as together we tried to fill the shoes of someone who set the bar pretty high. Casey really knows his stuff in regard to social media and statistics, and he often fields questions from others in the business about those areas. I am grateful for his help in what was really a transition year for us both."
In that regard, Grogan’s duties consist primarily of coordinating and handling statistical and social media responsibilities and the technical aspects of the GoBoxers.com website for all of the Boxers’ 24 varsity sports as well as eight junior varsity programs. Given the reins of the social media program when he arrived, he is constantly searching the web for new techniques and ways to help Pacific stand out on various social media platforms.
Among the special enterprises in which Grogan was involved this past year were coordinating the sports information side of things along with Blunck at the Hillsboro branch of the Oregon Northwest Conference Invitational baseball tournament, handling stats for Pacific softball games at the Northwest Cup tournament in Happy Valley, Ore., and a neutral-site baseball doubleheader against Pacific Lutheran at Clackamas (Ore.) High School.
Working with head golf coach Richard Warren and BirdieFire, Grogan was able to provide live on-course results for the Northwest Conference Golf Championships in the spring, a first for the conference. Pacific was the host for the golf tournaments, and he was on-site in Sunriver, Ore., to help run the tournament run and push it to a higher level of access and coverage.
“I honestly don’t think I can thank the sports information directors within the Northwest Conference enough,” said Grogan upon receiving the Jack Sareault Award. “It means the world to me to be recognized for my work, as this profession has already taken me to the other side of the country and back. The NWC sports information directors have become teammates to me, and it still blows my mind that I can reach out to any of them with questions and know I’ll get a helpful response back. I am grateful to work in this conference and at Pacific with great coaches throughout our department. And I have to give a thank you to the student-athletes at Pacific for not only giving me a reason to try and up my game on social media and other aspects of my job, but for making it fun to walk across campus and know I might get stopped for a chat or asked to share a super cheesy joke.”
Grogan came to Pacific after three years as the assistant director for athletic communications at Newberry College in South Carolina, where he served as the primary contact for women’s basketball, cheerleading, dance, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s lacrosse and the men’s and women’s soccer programs. He was responsible for branding, licensing, and social media initiatives within the athletic department.
As coordinator for academic awards at Newberry, Grogan helped the school produce 27 Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-District selections, the most in the state from 2011-13, and nine Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-America honorees. He planned and produced the inaugural Newberry Athletic Awards, known as “The Wolfies”, in which student-athletes, teams and coaches were honored for their achievements throughout the athletic calendar.
In his third year at Newberry, Grogan worked with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Palmetto Health Care and the Palmetto Health Breast Center to create the “Scarlet, Gray and Pink Initiative”, which raised more than $1,500 for breast cancer treatment and awareness in the greater Columbia-area. In January of 2013, he participated it he 2013 NCAA Emerging Leaders Seminar at the NCAA National Office in Indianapolis.
Prior to his time at Newberry, Grogan was a member of the game day media relations staff with the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer and a sports information intern with the University of Portland. During summers at Oregon State University, he served as a media relations intern with the Corvallis Knights of collegiate summer baseball’s West Coast League. In addition to media relations’ positions, Grogan has served as a play-by-play broadcaster and color analyst for the Knights and Oregon State University’s campus radio station KBVR.
A December 2009 graduate from Oregon State with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, Grogan was a sports reporter and sports editor for The Daily Barometer, the student-run daily OSU campus newspaper.
Grogan is an avid fan of professional soccer and the Portland Timbers, while also keeping an eye on former student-athletes at Newberry and following the field hockey program at WellsCollege, where his best friend is the head coach. He enjoys “playing tourist” in his home state via hiking, trips to the coast and Crater Lake and even within Portland – having gone to the Japanese Gardens for the first time just last year.
Grogan is the first assistant SID in the conference to receive the Sareault Award outright. Last year, Linfield SID Kelly Bird and his assistant, Katherine Brackman, shared the award.
Jack Sareault, who served for a number of years as sports information director for the Northwest Conference, was instrumental in documenting the league's entire sports history, going all the way back to its founding in 1926. In recognition of his invaluable work, the Conference Sports Information Director of the Year award was instituted in 2005 and named in his honor.
Previous Jack Sareault Award winners
2014-15 – Kelly Bird/Katherine Brackman, Linfield; 2013-14 - Blair Cash, George Fox; 2012-13 - Steve Flegel, Whitworth; 2011-12 - Nick Dawson, Pacific Lutheran; 2010-11 - Blake Timm, Pacific;
2009-10 - Chris Thompson, Puget Sound; 2008-09 - Blair Cash, George Fox;
2007-08 - Kelly Bird, Linfield;
2006-07 - Blake Timm, Pacific;
2005-06 - Steve Flegel, Whitworth/Northwest Conference