Justin Lafleur - Staff Directory - Dartmouth College Athletics

Staff Directory

Justin Lafleur

Title:
Associate Athletics Director of Strategic Communications (Football, Women's Basketball, M/W Swimming and Diving, Men's Lacrosse, Men's Heavyweight Rowing, Men's Lightweight Rowing, Women's Rowing)
Alma Mater:
UMass ’09
Email:
Phone (603):
603-646-2449
At Dartmouth:
3rd Year (2022-)

Justin Lafleur enters his first year at Dartmouth in 2022-23 as Associate Athletics Director for Varsity Athletics Communications. A veteran of the field, he came to Dartmouth from Lehigh where he worked for 12 years as Assistant Director of Sports Communications before being promoted to Senior Assistant Director.

While at Lehigh, Lafleur served as the sport contact for women's soccer, field hockey, men's basketball, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse and rowing, handling the day-to-day publicity of those programs. One highlight came in the 2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament when Lafleur served as the Sports Information Director for the men's basketball team that earned a historic upset over Duke. Following the game, Lafleur coordinated an endless number of national requests from practically every major outlet. He also worked with current NBA star CJ McCollum for three seasons and attended the 2013 NBA Draft in Brooklyn to cover the first-ever Lehigh player selected.

A few months after the Duke victory, Lafleur served as media coordinator for another NCAA Tournament game, when Lehigh men’s lacrosse earned the No. 7 seed and hosted Maryland in the first round. Active in the sport of lacrosse, Lafleur has seen a number of his stories (features and game coverage) used by national lacrosse outlets USA Lacrosse Magazine and Inside Lacrosse. He has also served on the official statistics team for the NCAA Men's Lacrosse National Championship Weekend for more than a decade. He also handled statistics for multiple women’s lacrosse championships as well.

During his time at Lehigh, Lafleur helped build the social media presence of his teams, with men’s basketball owning the most followers in the Patriot League on Instagram and Twitter, with field hockey far and away leading the league in Instagram followers and standing just outside the top 25 in the nation. Additionally, he helped @LehighMBB and @LehighLacrosse on Twitter get verified.

Lafleur was also in charge of leading Lehigh Athletics' storytelling efforts, finding and telling human interest stories (primarily through writing, but also video). He has won 10 awards in CoSIDA's writing contest between 2016 and 2022, including twice winning national awards in 2016 (for story with video) and 2022 (for event coverage). This past July, his video feature on field hockey's Lenke Havas was awarded Best in the Nation by CoSIDA for the category "Video Highlight Athlete In-Depth Feature - University."

Lafleur came to Lehigh after one year at Penn State as Athletic Communications Assistant, serving as the contact for field hockey, women's swimming and baseball. He was a four-year student assistant at UMass, which included serving as primary contact for women's soccer, skiing and women's tennis over his time.

Lafleur was a 2009 graduate of the University of Massachusetts, where he worked all four years as a student assistant in the Media Relations office. Over his time in Amherst, he served as sport contact for women’s soccer, women’s tennis and skiing, while playing significant roles in the coverage of almost every sport, including basketball, ice hockey, lacrosse and more. He graduated UMass with a degree in Sport Management, while earning his MBA from Lehigh in 2016.