Kathy Slattery Phillips One of Two to Receive the ECAC Commissioner's Award
9/6/2008 12:00:00 AM | Athletics
CAPE COD, Mass. - Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Commissioner Rudy Keeling announced that Kathy Slattery Phillips and Roger Gill will be honored posthumously with the ECAC Commissioner's Award at the 2008 ECAC Honors Dinner on Sunday, September 28 at the Crowne Plaza in Albany,
N.Y. Gill's wife, Annette, and Phillips' husband, Corey, are expected to attend and accept the awards on behalf of them.
The ECAC Commissioner's Award is being presented for the first time at this year's ECAC Convention and Trade Show. It is presented for meritorious service to the ECAC or an ECAC member institution. The recipient must have demonstrated significant accomplishment in his or her chosen professional field or on the athletic field.
Kathy Slattery Phillips, 55, served as the director of sports information at Dartmouth College for the past 24 years until her sudden passing last November. She was also well known for her accomplishments in New Hampshire women's amateur golf for more than three decades.
Following graduation from Syracuse University in 1974, she was a reporter in the Lebanon area for the Manchester Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday
News until she became Dartmouth's assistant sports information director in 1977. In 1983 she assumed the duties she held for the past 24 years.
She was the second woman SID in the Ivy League. She was responsible for all phases of communications relating to coverage of Dartmouth's 34 varsity athletic teams and played an important role in the evolution of women's athletics that were introduced at Dartmouth and the Ivy League in the 1970s.
She was dean of sports information directors in the Ivy League, a member of the College Sports Information Directors Association of America (CoSIDA) and of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Sports Information Directors Association. Phillips was the 1997 winner of the Irving T. Marsh Award, the "highest honor" given by ECAC-SIDA for contributions to the profession.
Phillips covered 305 consecutive Dartmouth football games dating back to Sept. 18, 1976, the 10th longest streak among the nation's sports information directors.
She graduated cum laude from Syracuse as a major in newspaper journalism and anthropology. At Syracuse she was captain of the women's swim team for two
years while working as assistant to the men's swim coach and coaching the Syracuse Chargers AAU program. As a senior she was the recipient of the Lucille Verhulst Sportswoman of the Year Award.
Her career in athletics began at Concord High where she began to accumulate numerous club, city and state golf awards. In 1968, at age 16, she won the Beaver Meadow women's golf championship at the Concord Municipal Course.
In 2002, she was recognized in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd after she won her 18th straight Hanover Country Club women's championship. That brought her total of New Hampshire club championships to 36 including five at Beaver Meadow, nine at Eastman Golf Links in Grantham, and 22 at Hanover
Country Club.
In addition, she won the 1988 New Hampshire state women's championship and for many years had been prominent in state and regional women's golf. She was a past president of the New Hampshire Women's Golf Association and, for all of her individual honors, regarded her role in establishing the state's junior golf program as her most notable achievement.
Phillips died on November 21, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center after a brief illness. In addition to her husband, Corey, survivors include a stepson, Carter, and a stepdaughter, Elizabeth.
Roger Gill, a native of Guyana, was a standout sprinter for Stony Brook in the early 90s. He still holds the school outdoor records in the 100- and 200-meters as well as holding the marks indoors at 200- and 400-meters. Gill is also listed in the Stony Brook record books as a member of five record-holding relay teams. Gill was Stony Brook's first freshman All-American, earning All-America honors six times during his career. He was also twice selected the Stony Brook Athlete of the Year, was a two-time ECAC MVP, Stony Brook's Senior Athlete of the Year, and a member of a Milrose Games first-place 4x400-meter relay team.
After competing for Stony Brook he went on to represent Guyana in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, running as a member of that country's 4x400-meter relay team. Gill's name is still in the record books as a member of the Guyanan team that holds that country's record in the 4x400-meter relay. He also won a bronze medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games in the 4x400.
Gill was a four-time all-state high school track athlete that became an integral part of the success of Stony Brook track & field in the early 90s, helping his team capture the ECAC track championships in 1991. Gill graduated from Stony Brook in 1995 with a B.A. in human resource management and took graduate classes at Stony Brook.
Gill, 35, was killed in an auto accident on March 2 in Brooklyn along with another Stony Brook alumnus, Warren Davies ('97). Gill is survived by his wife, Annette ('96) and their four children.
About the ECAC
The ECAC is the nation's largest athletic and the only multi-divisional conference in the country with 321 Divisions I, II, and III colleges and universities. The ECAC stretches from Maine to North Carolina and westerly to Illinois. Established in 1938, the ECAC, a non-profit service organization, sponsors more than 100 championships in 37 men's and women's sports and assigns more than 4,400 officials in 12 sports. The ECAC also administers eight affiliate sports organizations and six playing leagues, and through the public relations arm of the conference, more than 2,500 student-athletes in 23 sports are recognized annually. Finally, the ECAC serves as the primary conference for select members in the sports of men's and women's ice hockey and men's lacrosse.
