Kessler hired as first full-time sports information director
BOSTON, MA - Wheelock College has hired Josh Kessler as its first full-time sports information director, Director of Athletics and Sport-Based Initiatives Diana Cutaia announced on Thursday. Kessler spent the past five years as the assistant sports information director at nearby Wheaton College in Norton.
"It's an exciting time to be involved with Wheelock Athletics, and I appreciate being selected to guide the sports information department," said Kessler, who will provide media relations for all 11 of the institution's Division III varsity programs. "I'm looking forward to providing a vision and leading the department in a number of new, unexplored directions, as well as conveying the stories of the institution's athletic programs and student-athletes."
At Wheaton, Kessler was a member of a two-person department charged with promoting 21 varsity sports, many of which were nationally renowned Division III programs. This past May, he shared the college's Vision of Service Award after being among two honorees for the athletic department's 2008 Claudia Friese Special Recognition Award.
"The strengths that Josh brings will only help move the athletic department to the next level," said Cutaia, who oversees a department that added men's sports in 2007-08 and will field inaugural men's and women's lacrosse teams next spring. "We want all 150 of our student-athletes to feel represented in the face of this department, and in order to do that, we needed someone whose job is to get the message of what's going on in this department out there."
During the 2004-05 school year, Kessler was the sports publicity intern at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., where he publicized the institution's 34 Ivy League sports, working heavily with baseball, field hockey and the nationally-ranked women's ice hockey program, which competed in the Frozen Four.
A 2004 graduate of Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., with a degree in journalism and mass communication, Kessler worked as a student assistant for four years in the college's sports information department, aiding in the publicity of 21 Division II programs. In 2003, he earned the athletic department's George "Doc" Jacobs Award and the Eastern College Athletic Conference Sports Information Directors Association's (ECAC-SIDA) Bill Esposito Memorial Award.
A member of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), Kessler served on the local organizing committee at the 2010 ECAC-SIDA workshop. Kessler, a native of Colchester, Vt., also worked from 2006 to 2009 as an official scorer for the Brockton Rox of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball.
