Behind the Scenes at the Athletic Department

In a sports year at Hudson Valley there are approximately 240 student-athletes, over 230 games and over 30 competitive tournaments. Head Director of Athletics, Kristan Pelletier and assistant Director of Athletics, Justin Hoyt handle what goes on behind the scenes to help make it all happen. Hoyt received his bachelor’s degree in sport management, with a minor in business, from Clemson University and a master’s degree in sport administration from Canisius College. “I’ve been here for four years and before that I played and coached college basketball and that’s how I started with athletics,” Pelletier said. “I finished my under-graduate and graduate degrees at the college of Saint Rose and I’m currently working on another degree.”

In her four years she has help lead the athletic department to major improvements, “We’ve added two new sports, Facebook, Twitter, we’ve revamped our intramural program, a new weight room, we’ve added pumpkin palooza and hired a new trainer.” Hoyt said, “We’re just trying to get our sports information more organized and up to date.” But that’s not all, “A lot of marketing initiatives, the banners in the lobby, and we’ve completely re-done the website,” Pelletier said. “I handle all of the sports information; I do all of the press releases, keep the stats up to date,” Hoyt said. The Vikings football team currently holds practices behind the campus on a dried up dirt field, but not for much longer. “We’re working on a new turf field with a track that would be available to all of the teams and the campus community, whoever would want to use it,” Pelletier said. That will give the football team a field to practice on and soccer and other teams would use the field to play on.

In everything they do there is a rule they have to abide by, their rule book happens to be 200 pages. The rule book covers just about everything from eligibility to safety precautions. “When someone tries out for a team they have to get physicals and fill out so much paperwork and it’s a lot for someone to keep track of,” Pelletier said. Hoyt said, “Things like football helmets have to be changed after every season to make sure they are safe enough for use.”
There is so much to worry about for them; Pelletier said “If you can’t multi-task, this job is very hard to do.”

All sports information is in the Viking View, which is a magazine that was created by Hoyt in his tenor here and it is what he calls a “season wrap-up” for all the teams at Hudson Valley. The work is hard but Hoyt said, “I really enjoy it, so it makes it a lot better.” Pelletier said, “I love working with all of the different sports and all of the students with different backgrounds and I love seeing them succeed.”