Special Awards Profile: Double award winner Walt Riddle (Saint Leo) earns Lifetime Achievement and 2

May 3, 2011

in Awards,

College Sports Information Directors of America

This profile (below) on 2011 CoSIDA Special Awards dual recipient Walt Riddle is the 17th in a series of profiles and features on CoSIDA's 2011 Special Awards recipients. Riddle will be honored in Marco Island with both a Lifetime Achievement honor and a 25-Year Award.

written by Ann King, The Sage Colleges Sports Information Director

also see this article at www.saintleolions.com: CoSIDA Answers the Lions' Hardest Riddle

Walt Riddle, who currently serves as the Athletic Marketing Coordinator at Saint Leo University, will be recognized at CoSIDA this summer with the 25-Year Award and the Liftetime Achivement Award.

He assumed his latest role in the Saint Leo Athletic department in August of 2006, after serving as the Sports Information Director at Saint Leo.

In his current role, Riddle has increased the marketing efforts of the Athletic Department and has developed partnerships in excess of $75,000. Additionally, Walt serves as the Chair of the Saint Leo Hall of Fame Committee and the Saint Leo Green and Gold Booster Club.

Riddle’s affiliation with Saint Leo began in 1989 when he came to Saint Leo from the Sports Department of the Tampa Tribune to return to his true passion, college sports. In his early career after leaving Ohio State, Walt served as a sports writer for several papers in North Carolina where he was recognized by the North Carolina Tennis Federation for his reporting on tennis at the local, state and national level. Walt developed his management skills and abilities as the Sports Editor for the Columbia, South Carolina daily, the Columbia Record where he had a staff of four full-time writers.

He was honored by the College Football Coaches Association in 1969 for the paper’s reporting on college football. While a sports writer for the Tampa Tribune, Riddle covered local and state-wide athletics and received five state awards for his reporting.

Riddle joined the Saint Leo staff as Sports Information Director in August, 1989. He fulfilled the traditional duties of the SID, preparing media guides and press releases for the college’s 10 intercollegiate sports. Walt also counseled coaches and student-athletes on how to handle media interviews and served as the coordinator of operations for campus athletic events.

Walt did it all for Saint Leo.

While serving as SID he caught the attention of officials from Sunshine State Conference (SSC) who lured him to Orlando to serve as Assistant Commissioner. Riddle was with the conference for 11 years and was instrumental in taking the transition from a split office to the Orlando-based conference office of today. He played a key role in taking the conference office through the process of modernization with the use of computer generated statistical programs and he handled all SID duties for the SSC. He chaired the SSC Hall of Fame Committee and helped to produce one of the nation’s largest NCAA Division II television packages.

His commitment to Saint Leo University brought Riddle back to the university in 2001, when he returned to the SID position, which he held for five years before stepping into his new role as Athletics Marketing Coordinator.

Riddle's work with the Sunshine State Conference and its member institutions led to his induction in the SSC Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2005.

Active within CoSIDA, Riddle served on CoSIDA’s board of directors from 2000-2003 and served as a co-chair of the 1999 workshop in Orlando.

Riddle resides in Ridge Manor with his wife, Diane, and their pet labradoodle, Molly. The couple has two sons, Scott and David, and three granddaughters, Brittney, Brooke, and Courtney.

See link to original release and the March/April/May schedule of the Special Award profiles/features, below.