Related Content
CoSIDA.com/ThankYourSID
This feature is part of our series of profiles showcasing members throughout the CoSIDA membership during the celebration of CoSIDA Membership Recognition Week for 2020-21. See more features at CoSIDA.com/ThankYourSID.
Chuck Sadowski – University of Bridgeport, Athletic Communications Director
by Adam Rubin – Stony Brook, Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications
“Don’t hide behind technology. Be versatile, and remember that we are in a people business no matter how much technology we have. Try to serve your fellow professionals — because no one knows what our jobs really entail except for someone who walks in those shoes."
-- Chuck Sadowski, Bridgeport Athletics Communications Director
An award-winning and seasoned veteran in athletic communications for over 30 years,
Chuck Sadowski has worked across the country, with SID experiences in his native Texas, California, Illinois, New York and now in Connecticut. Through his career, Sadowski has been involved in CoSIDA and Eastern Athletic Communications Association (EAST-COMM, formerly ECAC-SIDA) leadership positions. He currently is the president of EAST-COMM. He received his CoSIDA 25-Year Award in 2012.
Sadowski also has vast experience in international and national sports events, including working at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Olympic Trials, and at NCAA basketball regionals while also serving in press box operations and doing statistics for Major League and minor league baseball teams.
Read more about Sadowski and how this French major found his way into a highly-successful sports media relations career.
Sadowski in the baseball press box. He has vast experiences working in press box operations and doing statististics for major league and minor league baseball teams as well.
During the University of Bridgeport’s Senior Day send-off for men’s soccer all-conference back Marlon Montanella in the fall of 2019, Chuck Sadowski delivered a few sentences of the Cannes-raised player’s tribute over the public-address system in French.
“He really appreciated that,” said Sadowski, UB’s sports information director since 2007. “Whenever I hear his English with a heavy French accent, I always just start speaking French to him.”
Sadowski, who owns a bachelor’s degree in French from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in French studies from NYU, once thought he would use the language skills he originally picked up living for a year abroad as a teacher or in the business world — like working for a French company in the United States or an American company in France.
Instead, a love of sports and a fortuitous recruitment landed him in a profession he has relished for the past three and a half decades.
After deferring his graduate studies for a year to attend Joe Brinkman’s baseball umpiring school in Florida, Sadowski arrived in Greenwich Village and began working part time in the NYU athletic department’s equipment room, doing laundry and folding towels.
Looking for a graduate assistantship in the sports information department, industry veterans Bob Goldsholl and Barry Neuberger heard about Sadowski’s penchant for writing and love of sports and offered him their open position.
So, Sadowski bid
au revoir to the equipment room, and ultimately his designs on using his French skills professionally.
After graduating, he enjoyed stops at multi-divisions – at Austin College in his native Texas as well as at the University of the Redlands, University of Chicago, the East Coast Conference and the University of New Haven before joining Bridgeport in 2007.
Sadowski has been actively giving back to the SID profession throughout his career.
Sadowski with Chris O'Connor who accepted the 2018 ECAC-SIDA Irving T. March Award for Fairfield University Associate AD Jack Jones at the ECAC-SIDA workshop.
Currently, Sadkowski serves as President of the Eastern Athletic Communications Association (EAST-COMM, formerly ECAC-SIDA). With a year being added to his tenure because of the pandemic, Sadowski joins former University of Rochester SID Tony Wells as the only two-term presidents of the organization. The group’s mission is professional development and to foster networking, including by sponsoring an annual summer workshop. Sadowski was honored by ECAC-SIDA with its 2015 Irving T. Marsh Award for outstanding contributions to the sports information profession.
Sadowski also is involved in CoSIDA, currently as a member of the Academic All-America Hall of Fame committee, and served on CoSIDA’s board of directors from 2002-06. He also had been active on the Stabley Writing Contest and (former) charity committee and (former) committee on committees.
He embraces being involved with Division II, and has served as East Region coordinator for the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association poll for the past eight years.
Sadowski began his career recording stats by hand and advises those in the profession to be nimble as technology evolves. Still, he suggested: “Don’t hide behind technology. This is still a people business.”
Said Sadowski: “Be versatile, remember that we are in a people business no matter how much technology we have, and try to serve your fellow professionals — because no one knows what our jobs really entail except for someone who walks in those shoes.”
As he spoke about his experiences shortly after the nation celebrated MLK Day, Sadowski fondly recalled the Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve.”
His love of sports goes back to his youth. Sadowski attributes the progressive lenses he now wears to having read college football guides while using a flashlight under his covers during his childhood days in Texas. He loved listening to 50,000-watt KMOX radio out of St. Louis in those days — the only way at the time to hear hockey calls in the Lonestar State.
Sadowski with the 2017 NCAA Division II East Region Championship Volleyball trophy.
As for his ill-fated baseball umpiring career, Sadowski noted that a couple of members of his class at Joe Brinkman’s school ultimately did reach Major League Baseball.
“It’s harder to make the majors as an umpire than a player in a lot of ways,” Sadowski mused.
So, back to his fluency in French. Sadowski had spent his seventh-grade year in France while his father Charles, an English professor at the University of Texas and Texas A&M, worked as a visiting professor at the University of Montpellier.
With no English-speaking schools in that southern region of France, Sadowski had to sink or swim while immersed entirely in French in school. He picked up the language so quickly, he moved to the general student-body class shortly after Christmas.
Those language skills are still being put to good use, though, on the occasions when Bridgeport’s roster includes a French student-athlete.