Logan Smith caught the sports bug early.
Back as a sixth-grade student at Paden City, Smith was offered the position of waterboy for the football team by then-head coach Mike Flannery.
It didn’t take long before the young man was hooked and wanting to be involved in anything sports-related.
Flash forward a few years, and Smith is a student at West Liberty while working as a videographer for the football and basketball teams.
He parlayed that into a similar position with the Akron Aeros, the Class AA affiliate of the Cleveland Indians.
Smith then worked as a sports reporter with the Tyler Star News before getting his first big break as the Assistant Sports Information Director at Walsh University.
Years later, Smith is now serving as the Associate Athletics Director at Division II Lake Erie College. In a sense, he’s come full circle.
Last fall, River basketball standout Lauren Flannery signed to play for the Storm and had a solid freshman season at Lake Erie. Her father? You guessed it, that same Mike Flannery.
“If it wasn’t for Mike letting me be the waterboy, it’s very possible I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today,” Smith said. “Now it’s great to catch up with him, whenever he comes up and watches games.”
It’s the icing on the cake for Smith. He’s doing a job he enjoys in an industry he loves.
Isn’t that everyone’s dream? In this case, Smith’s living it.
You started at Walsh as a graduate assistant sports information director. What drew you to that field, and what were some of your major responsibilities?
I was always looking to get into the sports field, and after being a sports reporter for a couple of years, I felt getting an MBA for free would be good. This was a good way to do it as I always felt that I could remember a bunch of random sports trivia. I had a contact from doing an internship with the Akron Aeros (now RubberDucks) two years prior, and everything kind of just fell into place. On my first day on the job, I attempted to do stats for the men’s soccer game. Eventually, that became one of my main duties. Writing recaps eventually came as well.
You advanced from assistant SID to SID. How did your role change in terms of not only individual responsibilities but in leading your staff?
When I was just a GA or an assistant, I had a handful of sports to worry about in regard to prep work and gameday duties. When I became the SID, I now had all of the sports as a responsibility in some way to make sure everyone got the proper coverage. Because I was promoted in the middle of the fall, there was a bit of a learning curve in how to juggle that, but I had been around long enough and felt I was the right person for the job. I didn’t get a graduate assistant until the following summer, so I was pretty much a one-man shop, but fortunately, I was able to get by.
Now as an associate AD at Lake Erie, what new duties did you take on that you didn’t have in sports information? More of a challenge? Less? Did moving to a fellow conference school make the transition easier?
When I accepted the position at Lake Erie College, it came along with the roles of overseeing game operations and facilities. I still have the responsibilities of sports information/communications which are second nature by this point, but the other two areas were new even though I’d been close by those areas for so many years. Thankfully I had more graduate assistants to work with that helped make my transition easier and helped me learn the ropes at a new place. The facilities I had been somewhat familiar with just from being there with my prior school, but learning where to place people and assigning locker rooms and such was a new skill to learn. I felt making the move to a new school in the G-MAC made it easier because most of my contacts remained the same. I already knew whom to e-mail regarding roster files, stats, and anything else from the conference office to the rest of the schools. Just from a personal standpoint, it was also nice not having to pack up and move terribly far away. I was able to bounce between North Canton and Painesville for a few weeks to help the moving process.
How difficult has it been for you and your coworkers adjusting to the pandemic fallout, not only from spring sports cancelation but the game number changes for the 2020-21 season?
Well, it’s difficult in that we still don’t know how our schedule will look this fall. With the Mountain East insulating schedules this fall, we’re still figuring out a few puzzle pieces, but I think everyone is kind of doing that one way or another. We’ll get there though. The entire athletic staff has been pretty good at being patient as different news has come the last few weeks with Ashland and Alderson Broaddus. There are a lot of changes taking place as a result of the pandemic, but everyone here has been fantastic in how they’re handling it.
For someone looking to get into sports information, what’s the best part about the job, and, if not worst, what’s the most difficult part?
I think the best part about the job is being able to support the student-athletes and watch them grow over their careers. When they win, you feel excited and happy for them. When they lose, you hurt for them. Personally, as a sports fan, I enjoy being able to see a bunch of different sports. I’ve learned a few new ones over the years as well. I used to watch lacrosse on TV before, but now I know quite a bit more about the game, and there’s still a lot I don’t know, but it doesn’t bother me. It interests me. The difficult part is the schedule. It’s not your typical 9-5. Nights and weekends are, indeed, nights and weekends. Not being able to go home for holidays is something that frequently happens as well. Last year I missed Thanksgiving because of the timing of a couple of home events made it too difficult. After a while though, it almost becomes second nature. I’m not sure what a 9-5 workday would feel like at this point. It would feel foreign to me.
