Gallaudet University Athletic Director Mike Weinstock announced this week the hiring of Sam Atkinson as the new GU Sports Information Director.   

Weinstock added that "... we are very excited to welcome Sam as our new Sports Information Director.  He brings a wealth of experience and success to our campus and we look forward to him continuing that great work here at Gallaudet."

Atkinson arrives at Gallaudet from Capital Athletic Conference foe Salisbury University, where he served in the same position for three years. He will start at Gallaudet University on July 6th.

While at Salisbury, Atkinson covered and promoted Salisbury's 21 varsity sports that captured 28 CAC championships in three years. He promoted SU's two-time defending NCAA Division III men's lacrosse national champions (2007, '08) along with two women's lacrosse national finalist teams ('07, '09) and a national semifinalist field hockey team ('07). During his tenure at SU he covered 394 All-CAC honorees, 69 All-Americans and 38 All-Atlantic Central Football Conference selections.

Salisbury captured three consecutive CAC All-Sports Awards and won the first two CAC Men's and Women's Commissioner Awards. Atkinson hosted nearly 50 NCAA tournament games in three years as SU served as a regional host seven times in five different sports. In 2009, SU hosted baseball, softball and women's lacrosse regionals (30 games) in 10 days. The Sea Gull softball team advanced to the NCAA Softball Championship round and women's lacrosse advanced to the title game. Atkinson has also had the pleasure to cover two ECAC Bowl Championship football teams in three seasons.

One of Atkinson's biggest accomplishments at SU was redesigning the athletic web site as he worked with PrestoSports to debut www.suseagulls.com in January 2008. He also used PrestoSports' Live Stats applications to run in-game statistics for hundreds of home SU games in two seasons.

Atkinson earned several national awards while at Salisbury University including the 2008 PrestoSports Sixth Man award which recognizes a client who made significant contributions to the product or company. He has also been recognized by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) in the annual publications contests where he received first-place honors in the Division B-C, District 2, Spring Sports Poster category last year. In 2007, the Phoenix, Md., native was named the Inside Lacrosse Division III Women's Lacrosse Media Service Award recipient.

Atkinson is also involved on the national level with CoSIDA where he serves as the chair of the Goodwill Committee.

Atkinson earned a B.A. in communication arts from Salisbury University in 2000. He served as the assignment manager at WBOC-TV out of college before moving to Baltimore to work at Inside Lacrosse magazine as its web content manager. Atkinson went back to television in 2003 where he served as head sports producer for Sinclair Broadcast Group, a national news organization based in Cockeysville, Md.

He later returned to the lacrosse world and served as the web content manager at US Lacrosse, the national governing body of lacrosse. Over the years he has been a freelance sports writer for The Baltimore Sun and The Salisbury Daily Times. Atkinson served a semester internship with CNN in Atlanta the fall of '99. He is also a proud Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America as he worked three summers at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M.

Atkinson and his wife Emily and newborn daughter Clare will relocate to Howard County this summer.