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The NCAA News - News and FeaturesThe NCAA News -- August 30, 1999
The evolution of sports information
Legendary Gettysburg SID retires as the standard to which others aspire
BY GARY T. BROWN
The legendary SID at Gettysburg College staffed the Bullets' season opener against rival Bucknell at the Chocolate Bowl in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that year, fresh out of college, and at the end of the game nearly fresh out of luck. There weren't any phones in the press box, so Kenworthy and fellow first-time SID Brad Tufts from Bucknell University had to do their late-night reporting from a couple phone booths downstairs behind the stands. Before the two rookies knew it, the stadium lights shut off and the gates were locked. "A policeman finally got us out," Kenworthy chuckled. But nobody got Kenworthy out of sports information -- not until "The General" retired this month from a profession he helped build to a new level for his Division III counterparts. Kenworthy has pretty much seen and done it all during his career, and he has earned just about every CoSIDA award imaginable in that time. He won the organization's Warren Berg Award in 1989 and was inducted into the CoSIDA hall of fame in 1990, only the second Division III SID to be so honored since Berg in 1970. And while some legends are born simply from longevity, Kenworthy's acclaim comes from a will to stay one step ahead of change while hanging on to the traditional values that make sports information a craft instead of a grind. "It's been his response to the changes in media that has made Bob what he is," said John Douglas, SID at Haverford and a Kenworthy peer since 1985. "Bob's always been at the forefront of how to do it right. He ran a very disciplined, organized press box, and in terms of weekly releases, nobody generated more weekly information and got it to more newspapers. He'd also go out on the road every year and visit sports editors -- just extremely professional. To me he's a standard of what we should be looking up to in Division III, or at any level for that matter." Kenworthy took his job to heart from the start. A keen believer in keeping the proper perspective -- that sports information is ultimately for the student-athlete -- Kenworthy was big on establishing personal relationships with those he served -- coaches, writers, athletics directors and, most importantly, players. "Students are a fascinating bunch," Kenworthy said. "I've kept up a lot of relationships over the years with former athletes, through their marriages and their children -- even one into his grandkids. "You've got to get out and meet the people you serve. It seems that no one does that anymore." Overcoming polio Kenworthy embraced that concept while beating the primary roadblock to the personal touch in sports information -- advanced technology. "Bob's been pulled in as many directions as the rest of us," Douglas said. "But he's been up to that challenge. That's the reason he's such a great example. He hit the ground running in 1959 and kept up." Kenworthy also had to beat something else that could have blocked his career -- polio. He contracted the disease when he was 13 and to this day uses leg braces and metal canes that clasp around his arms to aid his mobility. "I'll never forget the first time I saw him at Hershey Stadium," Tufts said. "I was up in the press box at the top of the stadium, and there was no other way to get there but to walk -- up a lot of steps. And I distinctly remember just watching him come up the steps -- and it's work -- he carries a lot of metal with those crutches -- and he gets to the top of the steps and he's got the biggest smile on his face and saying hello. And in 40 years I have never seen him any different. I've never seen him greet me or anybody else any other way. I think back on it a lot as an inspiration." Kenworthy, who can drive a vehicle and even play golf, said there have been a couple of instances in his life that have proven to him that he's achieved his goal of beating his disability -- both from physical and mental perspectives. Perhaps the most poignant was when Gettysburg's newly hired baseball coach approached Kenworthy one day about driving one of the team vans on a spring trip to Florida. "I told him I'd be happy to," Kenworthy said. "But the next day he came running back in all excited and said, 'Gee I never thought -- can you even drive a van? I never thought to ask you -- you do everything else around here -- I never even thought that you couldn't do it.' So I thought to myself, 'We'll, I've reached my goal.' " Another was when Kenworthy covered the Gettysburg football team in a game at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. It was a normal game, Kenworthy recalled, but just as in his first game at the Chocolate Bowl, getting out was anything but normal. "Wagner was one of those schools that rented their stands out," he said. "So we're finishing up after the game, and we can't see down below. We'd heard a lot of noise down there but we were making our phone calls and so forth. After I was done, I told the Wagner SID that I'd see him next year, but when I looked out the door there were no stands below. The only thing standing was this press box on four poles. "I said, 'We've got a problem here.' He said, 'What do you mean?' and I said, 'Well, how am I supposed to get out of here?' We thought about calling a fire truck or something but I told him if he could hand me my briefcase I thought I could slide down the pole. And that's what we did. Turns out that the stands were going to a circus the next day in New Jersey." A Division I model Life in sports information can indeed be a circus at times, but Kenworthy hasn't showed any effects of the chaos. He was exposed to sports information as a big-time endeavor early on because Gettysburg was a university-division school before the NCAA three-division structure was implemented in the mid-1970s. But even when the school chose to reside in Division III, Kenworthy ran a Division I show. "Bob started out on an equal footing with guys like Don Bryant at Nebraska, Bob Bradley at Clemson, Bill Whitmore at Rice and 'Scoop' Hudgins at the SEC," Douglas said. "And even though he's kind of glided into a very competitive Division III setting, he's been the role model for Division III because he's taken the Division I model of the 1960s and given it to all of us as an example of how we can run our offices. He basically invented the profession for Division III." "Sports information can be a trying business sometimes," said Tufts. "SIDs are being tugged on by every limb they have and even some they don't have. I'm sure Bob had some exasperating moments along the way but he never showed it. Bob added a pleasantness and congeniality to everything he did." Though Kenworthy has retired, he'll still be around the Gettysburg campus for the next year researching a few records to fill in some historical gaps in the sports information department files. It's a good bet those gaps are few and far between, however -- especially after 40 years of service from "The General." |
Bob Kenworthy worked his first football game as a sports information director in 1959 and was locked into the profession for the next 40 years -- almost literally.