In September, I pulled up the Union Athletics website for probably the first time in at least 6 months. I was met with bright red colors, photos of athletes frozen in action, and eye-catching headlines. It was my first time covering a soccer game for Cardinal & Cream and I felt way over my head.
The website not only proved invaluable for the assignment, but I’ve come back to check on games and scores just for fun.
Fast forward two months and a couple days, I found myself wandering the H hallways of the PAC to find the office of the man behind the curtain of that website: Steven Aldridge, the Associate Athletic Director of Sports Communication.
At the start of the interview, he insisted there were many other good people who deserved a feature as well.
Perhaps that may be true, but I can’t imagine anyone more deserving than Steven Aldridge.
It all began with a love for sports cultivated by his family. Aldridge’s eyes lit up as he recalled long gone days in high school on an undoubtedly noisy and bumpy ride with his dad, who drove his high school sport teams.
“I thought I was the coolest kid. I wasn’t, but I thought that was the coolest because I got to ride on the team bus because my dad drove it to go to some of the weekend games and stuff,” Aldridge said. Little did he know that he too would be working in sports and get to pass on the same experiences to his own kids.
Aldridge first came to Union as a student, working various jobs as baseball manager, statistician and laundry boy to pay for college. After being the first one to graduate with a sports management degree from Union, he later began his position as Union’s second ever Sports Information Director in the year 2000.
“I’ve been here 27 years now,” he said. “I’ve been here long enough to remember when we still did stuff through fax machines before we were posting stuff to websites. It doesn’t seem like a world that anybody knows, but I remember.”
That is a long time to be working in sports. Longer than I’ve been alive. While a love for sports was how he got in the door to working at Union, the people are the reason he stayed.
“My favorite part, I guess, is the people. You know, I like interacting with folks and even my coworkers that work for other schools and stuff. I’ve been here long enough that I’ve gotten [to see] just the quality of student workers and graduate systems that we’ve had come through here that are out doing their own thing now in this business,” he said.
His office bookcase is filled with frames of various shapes, sizes, and colors that housed pictures of the smiling faces of all those that he has impacted and cares for. His desire to impact the lives of others has led to relationships with graduate assistants that have lasted long after they moved on and started a family and career elsewhere. Aldridge noted that tournaments were his favorite because he got to meet up with friends, such as SID’s and AD’s on opposing teams.
Both Aldridge and his coworkers agree that working here at Union has formed a family of sorts. He recounted how the coaches and other people were here when he first began and their kids have grown up together.
“[Aldridge] helped me do all kinds of things… like yard work and things like that… [Aldridge and others] believe and they take action on what they believe. And that really just shows their character,” Teresa Thomas said, in her 25th year serving as the Athletics secretary here on campus. Gratitude spills into every word as she explained how she has been cared for by the family she’s found at Union after being widowed 27 years ago.
Though the job is a blessing in many ways, it isn’t without challenges. The world has changed much in the communication and sport industry. Those in sports communication have been forced to adapt to new technology and regulations on top of the crazy schedule that requires weekends, nights, and traveling for tournaments.
“College sports have been changing since day one. I mean, there’s always been changes. It just seems like here in the last few years, and it seems like it’s just rapid fire,” Aldridge said, reflecting on the state of sports as a whole.
But he has proved himself willing and able to do what needs to be done in the midst of the changing industry.
“As we’ve switched to modern equipment, streaming subscriptions, and ever-changing NCAA rules and regulations, he has adapted incredibly well. When he started working in Sports Information, he was working with equipment us students would call Stone Age. Now we work on laptops as thin as paper,” Kristen LaVallee, his graduate assistant, said.
His professional expertise was obvious by the trophies and awards that lined the top shelf of his office. But he never brought any of them up in the interview, always answering questions with future goals of improvement and, more importantly, being a light for Christ in a changing and chaotic world.
“What he does can be really frustrating. And he does not take that out on anybody,” Thomas said.
The recent changes, such as Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) turned the college sports industry into a different beast that has facilitated selfishness and constant moving to the next best option.
“[In] athletics as a whole, you see that a lot. You see a lot of self-promotion. You know, that’s hard to kind of look at and watch from my perspective,” Aldridge said, lamenting the state of the industry, but also grateful for the minimal effects it’s had on the Union so far.
Instead of leaving or promoting himself like many others in athletics right now, Aldridge has stayed and continued to selflessly serve because at the end of the day, God is in control and his work is just another opportunity to share the Gospel to the world.
“If we tell an athlete that winning and losing is not the end all be all, what does it look like if I treat it like it is?” Aldridge said. “You know, like if just because I don’t like NIL or I don’t like this or I hate the way this is panning out. If I let that define me, then what we’re saying about winning and losing is just fluff.”
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