Steve Conn, the Senior Associate Athletics Director for Communications, began his career at SHU in August of 2022. He oversees the strategic communications, media operations, video and photography, broadcasting and marketing for SHU Athletics, while also serving as a commentator on some of the ESPN+, SNY and FloSports broadcasts.
Conn, who has worked in college athletics since his undergraduate days at the University of Miami, served as associate athletics director and director of sports publicity for most of his 35 years (1987-2022) at Yale University. Conn, author of the book Yale Sports Stories, worked primarily with the hockey, football, lacrosse and heavyweight crew teams, while handling his role as a senior administrator. That role, at times, also included broadcasting games and mentoring students, many of whom went on to careers in sports and media. Conn was a student advisor and fellow at Yale’s Morse College as well.
In addition to the work on campus and traveling with Yale teams, he has assisted the NCAA with numerous post-season events. Conn has helped run 15 NCAA Men's Hockey Frozen Fours as well as basketball Final Fours, hockey and golf regionals and lacrosse national championships. With Yale teams, he has been on the support staff for national championships in hockey (2013), lacrosse (2018), heavyweight crew (2017, 18, 19) and sailing (2022).
Conn’s introduction to college athletics was going to practices and taking photos at games on the sidelines at Stanford University as a 12 and 13-year-old. He went on to graduate from the University of Miami (1985), where, after unsuccessful walk-on attempts in football and baseball, he served as a publicity intern and broadcaster for both of those national championship Hurricanes’ teams.
A communications intern at the University of South Alabama the following year, Conn found his way back to Connecticut, where he wrote for Yale Athletics while working for the Business Times newspaper.
Conn, who has earned multiple writing awards from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), began his Yale career in 1987 as the assistant sports publicity director and took over that office in 1993, the same year he earned a master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of New Haven, where he taught public speaking as an adjunct professor in 2021.
The 1981 Amity High School graduate and 2018 Hall of Honor inductee played basketball and baseball for the Spartans. He and his wife, Emily Resnik Conn, live in Woodbridge, Conn., and have two sons, Jeremy and Jordan, who were varsity athletes at Union College and the University of New Hampshire, respectively.
Â
