INDIANAPOLIS – The Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) has named John Kean of Missouri S&T as this year’s recipient of the Dr. Thomas Kearns Service Award, it was announced Friday by the Conference office.
He will be formally recognized at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Spring Awards Reception in St. Louis on Tuesday, May 22.
The Dr. Thomas Kearns Service Award is presented to an individual or group that has contributed to the success of the GLVC as it relates to the NCAA Division II attributes of learning, balance, resourcefulness, sportsmanship, passion and service.
Kean has been the Sports Information Director at Missouri S&T for the past 28 years while the Miners have been GLVC members since 2004. In his role on campus, Kean has oversight of the entire athletics communications effort for the school’s 17 sports and has also served on various committees within the Conference and the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) organization.
Along with CoSIDA, Kean has also been heavily involved with the Division II Sports Information Directors of America (D2SIDA), serving as an at-large board member with the Division II group and as the D2SIDA president, where he has helped organize the divisional day as part of the annual convention. Kean has also played a vital role in the updated D2SIDA strategic document. Prior to his term as president in 2014, Kean served as vice president and member of the D2SIDA board. In that role, he attended the last four NCAA Conventions as the D-II representative for a CoSIDA leadership group that meets at the convention and also serves as vice-chair on the College Division Management Advisory Committee (CDMAC) for CoSIDA.
With the GLVC, Kean has had stints on the Scheduling Committee and the programming subcommittee during the creation of the GLVC Sports Network. He has worked as the statistician at five GLVC Basketball Championship Tournaments and covered many other duties at various league championship events throughout the years.
Additionally, the Florissant, Missouri, native has assisted with media operations at five of the last six NCAA Basketball Elite Eight tournaments and was the internal public address announcer at the 2017 D-II Football Championship game.
In each of his roles, Kean has provided a great deal of leadership and service to the GLVC and its membership, having been at the forefront of media relations in NCAA Division II while working hard to focus on and celebrate the Miners student-athletes as well as those from other Conference member schools. Throughout his tenure, he has immersed himself in the Conference and national business of media relations and has made a significant and positive impact on both. Because of his strong leadership and service, he is highly respected by his colleagues both in and out of the GLVC. Kean has unselfishly volunteered to assist the league office in administering numerous championship events, including several at which S&T was not participating, while being instrumental on campus in assuring quality game management for both Conference and non-conference regular season games, as well as for the GLVC Championship events hosted in Rolla.
The GLVC Service Award is named in honor of Dr. Thomas Kearns, who was Northern Kentucky’s faculty athletic representative for 23 years and provided unparalleled service to the GLVC during that period. Kearns served the GLVC as both treasurer and president during his tenure at NKU and assisted with the budget reporting system and the current revenue sharing policy. He spearheaded the league’s first major expansion, wrote the GLVC Hall of Fame guidelines, served on the initial GLVC Awards Committee and developed and maintained the GLVC Handbook. Kearns spent countless hours developing the GLVC into one of the premier NCAA Division II athletic conferences.
The award was first presented in 2011 to Northern Kentucky’s Kevin Listerman, and has since been awarded to SIU Edwardsville’s Eric Hess (2012), USI’s David and Lois Stevens (2013), Kentucky Wesleyan’s Roy Pickerill (2014), USI’s Ray and Cindy Bippus (2015), Doug McCarty and Dan Cunningham (2016) of the EastSide Centre in East Peoria, Illinois, and Saint Joseph’s College’s Bill and Teresa Massoels (2017).