Communicators Outside the Lines Series: A.J. O'Hagan, Yeshiva
College Sports Information Directors of America
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This is the next profile in a series entitled Communicators Outside the Lines: Better Yourself, Better Your Community produced by the CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee. Read past profiles at CoSIDA.com/CommunicatorsOTL.
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If you have any ideas for this series, which will revolve around CoSIDA member volunteerism and health and wellness, please contact Goodwill and Wellness Committee chair Chris Mitchell, Washington University in St. Louis Assistant AD for Communications, at (618) 560-9280 or mitchell@wustl.edu.
Q&A with A.J. O'Hagan
Yeshiva University, Sports Information Director
by Kevin Maloney – Jones College, Assistant AD for Sports Information
CoSIDA Goodwill and Wellness Committee member
Yeshiva University fourth-year sports information director Anthony “AJ” O’Hagan faces a daily battle. O’Hagan lives with autism, a condition that affects more than 3.5 million Americans and 1 in 59 births.
Diagnosed at three-years-old, he’s lived with autism his entire life. O’Hagan’s younger brother, Nicky, and goddaughter, Natalie, were also diagnosed around the age of one.
Autism is defined as a neurological condition that's marked by differences in learning styles, passionate interests in specific subjects, repetitive motion and sometimes difficulty with language and communication.
If there’s one thing that stood out the most during my interview with AJ, it was the word stereotype. In our nearly 40-minute conversation, that word was used several times.
The stereotype is that people like AJ can’t play sports, aren’t athletic enough, are odd or strange and struggle in social situations. AJ and others living with his condition, however, prove every day that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.
O'Hagan (fourth from right) with his "Autism Awareness" team at the 2019 CoSIDA 5K in Orlando.
Born and raised in The Empire State, O’Hagan moved to the Bronx when he was 11 and has been there ever since. He received his undergraduate from Utica College in 2011 and his masters in sports business management from Manhattanville College in 2013.
O’Hagan’s introduction to sports was when the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994. He was five. He remembers his parents waking him up the next morning telling him they won, and he watched the VHS recording of the game, felt the emotion and excitement and became a sports fan that day.
O’Hagan has worked in the profession for six years and has also enjoyed his fair share of fun playing intramural wiffleball, basketball, floor hockey, flag football and indoor soccer when he was an undergraduate at Utica College.
“I’ve been a part of a few championship teams,” O’Hagan said. “But the big one for me was at the end of my sophomore year, my friends and I formed an “Autism Awareness” team for all sports that we played in. We won a championship in wiffleball that first year and that was a pretty big defining moment for me.”
He still plays wiffleball in an annual O’Hagan Fathers vs Sons/Daughters game. He also swims a lot, competing in long distance and freestyle for the American Turner Club at the Throggs Neck Interclub swim races against all the beach clubs in his neighborhood.
Q: What challenges do you face on a day-to-day basis living with autism?
O'Hagan: Social situations generally make me a little uncomfortable. I’ve gotten better with it over the years, but I always have that paranoia that people are watching me and judging my every move. I’m not a fan of being in front of a crowd of people and my anxiety goes way up in a room full of people.
Q: What’s the biggest misconception about autism?
O'Hagan: I just think people need to be less judgmental. It’s a very diverse world. People with disabilities need to be accepted for who they are. I’ve read horror stories with my friends and family about how autistic people are treated in public. I knew one mother back in Utica whose son always gets picked on by other people. He gets stared at and people mumble insults under their breath. We have to be better than that.
Q: You started an Autism Awareness Club in January 2009. How did that come about?
O'Hagan: I learned a lot about autism just by growing up with my brother and having a lot of positive and negative experiences growing up autistic, myself. Nicky and I each had our ups and downs because of our autism. I struggled in social situations when I was younger. When Nicky was a kid, he occasionally had meltdowns in public. Everyone kept staring at my mom when those meltdowns happened. People around us probably thought Nicky was just being a brat. The thing is, when autistic people throw tantrums, it can be triggered by being too hot, having an uncomfortable collar on your shirt, or being frustrated in general.
I felt like I needed to help make people aware of what autism truly was, to let people know all the gifts that a person with autism has, his or her talents, interests, the negative parts of autism, how can you tell if someone has autism, etc. So my friends and I formed the club and did lectures, fundraising events, movie nights and more to raise awareness. It was active for the last two years I was in college and a couple of years after I graduated.
O’Hagan still does independent lectures now, mainly speaking to young children with autism in their classrooms. He’s also sat in and has been a panelist for some conferences around his community. And every April, with it being Autism Awareness month, he posts one fact a day on social media regarding autism on his personal Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, mainly how to properly diagnose someone, how can you tell if someone has it, what exactly it is and things like that.
O'Hagan at the YAI Autism Conference.
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