BEAVER TOWNSHIP — As the longest tenured sports information director in Youngstown State University athletics history, Trevor Parks has witnessed first-hand the positive transformation for disseminating information of its men’s and women’s intercollegiate programs.

Now in his 24th year at the helm, he manages all aspects of media relations for its 21 programs, serving as director of athletics communications where he leads a talented staff while overseeing all football-related publicity and requests.

“It was great to end the season with a win over Northern Iowa last Saturday and send the seniors out with a win,” Parks told the Curbstone Coaches during Monday’s meeting at Avion Banquet Center. “Multiple players have been with us since before COVID but battled to remain with the program and helped get us to the playoffs last year. I enjoyed working with them and appreciated their assistance throughout the year.

“We lost close games to Villanova, Duquesne, Missouri State, Illinois State, Southern Illinois and for the most part, South Dakota. I had one of our players – tailback Tyshon King – as an intern last summer and it was good to get to know him. I wish him and the others nothing but the best of luck going forward.”

Parks coordinates all gameday statistical information for the Penguins’ men’s and women’s basketball programs, also coordinating the department’s Watch ESPN broadcasts.

He assists with the day-to-day social media efforts for Penguin athletics, also working with the track and field, and men’s and women’s tennis programs.

“We didn’t get a chance to see much of the game on Saturday due to the football game, but what a great performance by our men’s basketball team at Syracuse,” Parks said. “They have played three games, scored at least 80 points in each one and are off now to Texas for three games, so hopefully they can build on that showing.

“I was happy that coach [Ethan] Faulkner got the opportunity to take over and build upon the excellent job that coach [Jerrod] Calhoun did. I always liked how invested he was and know he will do a fantastic job, so it will be exciting to finally have them play a home game on Nov. 27.

“Our women’s team is off to a 3-0 start after beating Clarion last Friday. The more this team plays together, the better they will be, and I was impressed with how we managed the end-of-game situations in our two most recent wins. Coach [Melissa] Jackson is excited to be here and we are excited to see what she can do.”

Cross country/track and field head coach Brian Gorby has led his six combined program’s to 60 conference titles while producing multiple NCAA qualifiers.

“I had the opportunity to go to three cross country events this fall and they are some of the most dedicated athletes that we have,” Parks said. “In August, I was at their season opener, which was humid and delayed by a thunderstorm. At their home meet back in September, it was an almost perfect day as the women’s team won, and last Friday, I attended the NCAA Great Lakes Regional to support the team.

“It was close enough to make the trip over to Akron, cool and overcast for the women’s race but about 2K into the men’s 10K race, it started misting heavily and became pretty miserable, but they couldn’t stop. It is fun watching the spectators maneuver back and forth as they jockey for position throughout the course. Our men’s team had another great year as they won their third straight Horizon League title.”

Parks updates and provides general maintenance on ysusports.com and has also assisted in the redesign of the athletic department website.

“We are fortunate to have some great resources at YSU and try to do the best for our student-athletes from the athletics communications side of things,” Parks said. “We recently opened the digital media studio in Stambaugh Stadium near our ticket office and have had many compliments on what we can do with the facility. We are just scratching the surface on getting it up to speed, but it has been a key asset in recruiting for our programs. I spent part of Sunday in there with potential football signees.

“Our student-athletes love the photo shoots that we do, and we use those to create content to promote all of our teams as equally as possible. We added a social media coordinator position and that has been key in helping us keep things organized. We are able to construct new ways to show off our student-athletes and simply work on our recruitment of students for video, photos and graphics. That allows us to focus on the communications and game operations aspect of our jobs.”

Next Monday, D.J. Yokley, president of YSN – Your Sports Network – will serve as guest speaker.