Sports Information Director

Mark Adkins, who took over as sports information director in October 2018, has been in the sports information field since 1999-2000 when he started off as a graduate assistant at North Dakota State University. He earned his first full-time position at his alma mater of Wartburg College of Iowa in the summer of 2000 and remained there until June 2011. Adkins moved on to Norwich University of Vermont for one year after his tenure in Waverly, returning to his Midwest roots in North Manchester, Ind., beginning the summer of 2012 until he and his family moved back to the Hawkeye State.

During his time at Manchester, he was in charge of a total overhaul of the athletics website, http://www.muspartans.com; oversaw tremendous growth in social media platforms for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, an example of that success is the athletic department's YouTube page going from infancy with his arrival to 160-plus subscribers and over 100,000 views due in large part to the creation of a weekly show entitled The Spartan Show which focuses on various athletics news and interview subjects over each week of the academic year; and developed strong relationships with local, regional and national media sources which include major feature placements in NCAA Champions magazine and student-athletes and coaches for Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd.

A former CoSIDA (Collegiate Sports Information Directors of America) board member, he currently serves as chair of the CoSIDAU program. His service for the national organization hasn't stopped with his board or CoSIDAU roles. Adkins has also been a part of the Academic All-American national leadership (2003-18) as a district coordinator and current director of new media and helped revive the Fred Stabley, Jr., Writing Contest as a national co-chair (2010-14). He's served as a media relations host for championship events along several levels during his career. They include NCAA Division III wrestling (2001); NCAA Division III men's and women's outdoor track and field (2005); NCAA Division III women's golf (2008); and NCAA Division III men's and women's cross country (2010) along with various regional men's and women's basketball, soccer, women's volleyball, men's ice hockey, football, and softball contests. The 2004 National Wrestling Media Association's Division III Publicist of the Year is also heavily involved with promoting athletics on the national level in other areas having served as a weekly pollster and regional honor teams selector for D3Football, D3Hoops, and D3Baseball.com's sites; being part of the United States Basketball Writers Association's Division III Player of the Week selection process (2015-17) and handling the national director for the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association's Division III weekly awards from 2015-18 and enabling the NCBWA to launch a similar campaign for the NAIA beginning with the 2019-20 season.

Adkins' love for the sports media field began as a sports writer at the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier during his undergraduate work at Wartburg College. From a span of 1988 to 1999, he was the sports editor at four weekly newspapers in the state.