FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chickering recognized by peers
following first year at Anna Maria

WINTHROP, Mass. – Samantha Chickering has been named the 2015 Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Sports Information Director of the Year, the conference office announced on Tuesday. Chickering recently completed her first year at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass. and earned the recognition following a vote amongst her athletics communications peers across the GNAC.

After a two-year stint as an assistant in the Norwich University sports information office, Chickering was hired as the full-time sports information director at Anna Maria in August 2014. There, she immediately vaulted AMCATS athletics communications into a new era of live coverage, as she upgraded live stats from an HTML format and introduced live streaming for eight programs on campus.

“This is great news and well deserved,” said Anna Maria Athletic Director Laura Habacker. “Samantha is a one-person operation here at Anna Maria and works very hard to get all of our student-athletes coverage. She is a true professional.”

The 2010 Southern New Hampshire University graduate launched the revamped goamcats.com this past December and made social media a priority, increasing Anna Maria’s Instagram followers by 900 percent. She also made great advancements and key improvements on Twitter (@goAMCATS).

Chickering was also very involved in GNAC Tournament play, hosting a GNAC Field Hockey semifinal and a GNAC Men’s Basketball Quarterfinal before serving as a neutral statistician at the 2015 GNAC Baseball Tournament in Nashua, N.H.

Chickering’s proudest accomplishment of the 2014-15 academic year came when Anna Maria senior men's basketball standout Michael Gorman was featured in NCAA Champion Magazine for his volunteer efforts within his childhood community. To view the article online, please click here.

Prior to Norwich, Chickering began her career as a graduate assistant at Southern New Hampshire, where in 2012 she received her master’s in social media marketing. She received her bachelor’s in Sport Management two years earlier.

Originally from Hillsboro, N.H., Chickering is a member of both CoSIDA and ECAC-SIDA. 

Founded in 1995, the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) is an NCAA Division III association made up of 12 member institutions and over 3,000 student-athletes across the New England region. Each year, the GNAC sponsors and administers 17 championships, while balancing academic integrity, athletic opportunities and community involvement.

– #theGNAC –