Tate, Tooley win sports publication awards for media guides

Katie Tooley and Bruce Tate have represented OU in a fashion not seen often in Ottawa.

Last month, in the CoSIDA Publication Awards in San Fransisco, Tate won the award for Best Cover in Division C for his design of the 2009-2010 men's and women's basketball combined media guide cover.

Tooley made the actual media guide for those respective sports, and earned a second place finish the C Division.

She also received some other awards.

"For the football media guide, I got fifth at the NAIA SIDA Awards, and earned Sports Information Director of the year in the KCAC (Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference)," she said.

Tate, OU's Assistant Athletic Director and Head Women's Basketball Coach started making the media guide covers during the 2005-2006 school year.

"This is my first one for first place," Tate said. "Any award you get is nice, definitely on a national level. Its good to see smaller NAIA schools compete with bigger NCAA schools."

"For us to be recognized is definitely a privilege."

Tate also said he thinks what he did for the football media guide will be enjoyable to fans this year.

"I think people will enjoy (the football cover), and the posters have a nice vintage look to it," he said.

As Ottawa's SID, Tooley is responsible for getting all of the athletic information about each sports team, as well as keeping up the university athletics web site.

She has to make the media guides, all teams stats, getting player of the week results out to newspapers and making player mug shots.

Through all of that work, she doesn't mind a little recognition.

"It means all the hard work is recognized," Tooley said. "It's a great honor and it makes the programs look better. It helps showcase the sports history."

Marianne McGoron hasn't been working with Tate or Tooley long, but she understands that they do a lot of work.

"They keep me busy - I do a lot of gameday preparation and administrative duties," she said. "It takes up a lot of time."

She said even though the work is tough, it will all pay off in the end.

"It's great working for both of them," she said. "The give me good direction and help me out a lot since I'm new to campus."