When it comes to sports, the athletes and coaches are surely the focal point of media and fan attention.  But behind the scenes, there are many people that make everything run smoothly. Graduate Assistant Noah Schlekeway knows the importance of the things that happen behind the scenes.  

The sports information GA has been interested in the inner workings of sports since high school. 

“I really decided that I wanted to work in sports back in high school When I became the girls’ basketball statistician” Schlekeway said.  

Schlekeway continued to keep stats for his high school teams, attempting to decipher the career path he was looking to take. After enrolling at Wayne State College, he would go through and work with the sports information department throughout his undergraduate years and decided to come back and work under Sports Information Director Mike Grosz. Schlekeway has always been interested in sports with his dad being the women’s basketball coach at Sioux Falls Washington. Although never being a player his father has always kept him around sports. 

Many people do not know much about the sports information world, or the inner workings of making a Wayne State athletic event run smoothly. One of Schlekeway’s main responsibilities on gameday is keeping the statistics for the Wildcats. This is one of the most important parts of making sure everything is going correctly, being sure that the stats are correct and accounted for is very important for recaps and for coaches and other sports information staff to see. Alongside keeping stats Schlekeway has also had experience running the game clocks as well as promoting the event in the media with photos and writing gameday stories for the Wildcats website. On non-gamedays Schlekeway’s work is still not done, he works with Grosz in order to create media guides and to provide coverage for all Wayne State College athletics. 

Schlekeway does things for all sports around campus, but he truly enjoys covering basketball. “Some of my favorite sports to cover are basketball because I have been around the sport my entire life.” Schlekeway said 

Covering stats for basketball comes easily to Schlekeway as he was around the sport all the time as a child. Although basketball may be his favorite sport to cover, Schlekeway is a part of almost all sports here at Wayne. 

“I also enjoy covering football, volleyball and baseball,” Schlekeway said I don’t find any of these particularly difficult. I have had the opportunity to cover everything here.” 

Schlekeway’s long-term goal is to eventually become a sports information director himself at a division one college, and he couldn’t have found a better mentor to help him get to this point than Mike Grosz. The 2 have been working together for the last 5 years and have been keeping people up to date with sports over that entire time. But they cannot do it alone, the help of students in the sports information department is imperative to making sure everything runs smoothly. 

“We really couldn’t do it without the help of the students though, it would be difficult to cover all areas off the gamedays without their help,” Schlekeway said. 

Being behind the scenes of sports may not always gain the publicity or recognition they may deserve, but without the help of people such as Schlekeway and Grosz the Wayne State College gamedays would look completely different.