SUNY Oswego - Alumni Association - August E-Newsletter

August 2010 • Vol 6 No 5

Fresh Faces to Lead Spring Sports

SUNY Oswego recently added four new faces to lead lacrosse, softball, tennis and cross country next season.
From top, coaches Ryan Martin, Casey Price, Bobby Wilson and Ron Bronson

Ryan Martin will step in to replace longtime lacrosse coach Dan Witmer ’82, M ’87 next season.

Martin joins the Lakers after having served as the assistant coach at Nazareth College for the past four seasons. His efforts as defensive and recruiting coordinator helped Nazareth capture the Empire 8 Championship and earn bids to the NCAA Division III Tournament in 2007 and 2009 and an Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship in 2008.

In four seasons with the Golden Flyers, Martin has worked with eight USILA All-Americans, two Empire 8 Conference Players of the Year, and four USILA Scholar All-Americans. In addition to his coaching responsibilities, he served as the Nazareth intramural director.

Prior to joining the coaching staff at Nazareth, Martin had two stints as an assistant coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for the 2006 season and Hampden-Sydney College for the 2005 season.

“We are extremely pleased to have Ryan Martin taking over the leadership of our men’s lacrosse program”, said Tim Hale, Oswego State Athletic Director. “He brings a wealth of high-level experience as a player and coach to our program. His experience and enthusiasm will provide the guidance for future Laker success.”

Softball
Casey Price has been selected as the head softball coach at Oswego. Price recently completed her first season as a volunteer assistant pitching coach at Division II University of Massachusetts at Lowell where she assisted with scouting, recruiting and pitching fundamentals.

Prior to joining the staff at UMass-Lowell, Price had been a volunteer assistant pitching coach at SUNY Plattsburgh from 1999-2010.

Price competed at the University of Oklahoma, where she was recruited as a pitcher after being a three-time first team all-state high school player in Iowa before converting to an outfielder.

She was named Freshman Female Athlete of the Year at Oklahoma, and later inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Athletic Hall of Fame and the NCAA Hall of Fame. Price was also the first player to score a run at the Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.

Tennis
New tennis coach Ron Bronson served the 2009-10 academic year on the boys’ and girls’ tennis coaching staff at Colorado Academy in Denver after serving as the assistant men’s tennis coach at Aurora University in Aurora, Ill. in 2009. In addition to his coaching responsibilities at Aurora University, he served as the institution’s director of electronic communications.

Bronson is presently on the senior staff at Windridge Tennis & Sports Camp at Teela-Wooket in Roxbury, Vermont. Prior to his scholastic and prep coaching career, Bronson spent seven years as a coach at various camps around the country including three years as Tennis Director at Camp Awosting in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

As a player, Bronson played a season for Monmouth College in Illinois in 2003 after four years in the United States Air Force.

Cross Country and Track and Field
Bobby Wilson, previous assistant coach for the cross country and track and field programs at Division I Bucknell University, was recently named head of the men’s and women’s cross country and track and field programs at SUNY Oswego.

Wilson helped guide the Bucknell women’s cross country, women’s indoor, women’s outdoor, and men’s outdoor track and field programs to Patriot League titles during the 2009-2010 academic year. The conference championship won by the men’s outdoor track and field program was the first league title for the Bison since 1991. He was also a part of the Patriot League women’s indoor and outdoor track and field championship squads in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Prior to arriving at Bucknell, Wilson gained coaching experience at his alma mater Virginia Commonwealth (2000-02), SUNY Oneonta (2002-03) and the College of William & Mary (2005-07).

— Adele Burk

PHOTO CAPTION:
From top, new coaches Ryan Martin, Casey Price, Ron Bronson and Bobby Wilson.

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Oswego Alumni Association, Inc. • King Alumni Hall - SUNY Oswego • Oswego, NY 13126
315-312-2258 • 315-312-5570 (fax) • E-mail: alumni@oswego.edu • Web site: oswego.edu/alumni

Who doesn’t want to save the world? Michael Kite ’02 does that for a living through World Wildlife Fund.

As marketing specialist for one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, Kite and his team of three work to raise more than $5 million each year. The majority of that money comes from licensing partnerships and promotions with the likes of Barnes & Noble, Gap, Hewlett-Packard, Dial and Coinstar.

Retail partnerships help WWF spread its message to the general public and raise funds for its conservation work around the globe. For example, Bank of America contributes $100 for every special Visa account opened and Nabisco is supporting WWF’s “Year of the Tiger” initiative with special packaging and a $100,000 donation. The new CVS Green Bag Tag program rewards reusable bag-toting customers, and generates five cents for WWF for each tag sold.

All support WWF’s mission of protecting the future of nature, down to the finest details, Kite said.

“We like to see that the product is made from recycled material and is recyclable itself, and somehow ties into our mission,” Kite said. The Green Bag Tag, for instance, is made from a corn-based material and features a 100 percent recycled silicone lanyard.

As a broadcasting major at Oswego, Kite got involved with WRVO-FM and WNYO-FM.

“I think it gave me a lot more confidence in talking to people,” he said. It was an important part of his early career in broadcast sales and remains an important piece in the message he “sells” today.

“The best part of my job is seeing a product in the store with the WWF logo after months of working with a company to launch it,” said Kite, who joined the organization in 2006. “It’s rewarding to give people a fun, unique way to protect our planet.”

— Shane M. Liebler