Airis Thomas joined the Winston-Salem State athletics communications staff as the Sports Information Director in January of 2022 and will oversee the publicity of all Rams NCAA Division II athletic programs. She also will help manage all the social media pages.
Prior to WSSU, Thomas was at Coppin State for five months as the Assistant Director of Communications. She helped oversee the publicity of all Eagles NCAA Division I athletic programs. Her last two months with the Eagles she served as the interim Sports Information Director covering men and women’s basketball, as well as bowling and volleyball. She helped write feature stories for the website and assisted with the day-to-day operations in the department.
Thomas also assisted the local Maryland colleges such as Bowie State and Morgan State with doing statistics for volleyball and football, respectively. Â
Prior to Coppin, she was a part of the Towson University athletic media relations staff as the media relations intern from 2018-2021. She served as the contact for women’s soccer, men and women’s swimming and diving, track and field, gymnastics, and softball. She was the official scorer for the men and women basketball programs and backup statistician for football.
In 2019, Thomas was one of six to earn the NCAA Inclusion College of Sports Information Directors (CoSIDA) grant. She was awarded the chance to go the annual convention and visit the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.
Prior to Towson, she was at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) as the department’s marketing and Game Day Coordinator for two years. She oversaw all the social media accounts for the athletic teams and coordinated all the game day activities for half time and media timeouts for men and women’s basketball. Two of her major events with the Hawks were the annual Take a Kid to the Game and organizing Hawk Hysteria during basketball season. She also worked with the Student Athletic Advisory Committee and made sure all the community service was publicized for the website.
Thomas also got to spend the 2016 and 2017 seasons working with the Delmarva Shorebirds, the Baltimore Orioles single-A minor league baseball team in Salisbury, Maryland. While working with the Shorebirds she got to entertain the fans by playing the music during the game as well as working the video board. She also got to help with the different community service campaigns such as Brooke’s Toy Closet.
In 2014-2015, Thomas worked as a media relations staffer with the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) helping to prepare game notes and assist with conference tournaments. She helped produce the basketball tournament media guide and updated the year-end review. She worked on weekly bowling nominations and assisted with the program book for the indoor track meet. She assisted with the game notes for basketball and football and made sure the operations for volleyball, basketball, and baseball tournaments ran as smoothly as they could. She also sat in on the weekly football coaches' meeting and used an editing software program to cut clips for the website.
During her undergraduate years, Thomas was a 2012 summer Intern at Morgan State University where she was one of the writers for that upcoming season’s football media guide. She also helped write team bios and update team schedules for the website.
A graduate of UMES (kinesiology, ‘13) she also was the media relations and marketing intern for three years. She served as a liaison for officials as well as helped the staff with various day-to-day tasks in the office.
The Windsor Mills, Md., native was the past president of the Resident Hall Association at UMES and was the past secretary for the Hollarin' Hawks Pep Squad. In 2012, she was a National Communication Coordinator for the Resident Hall Association and the past president of the National Society of Leadership and Success. She served as the manager for the UMES baseball team for three seasons and as a mentor for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
Thomas is currently a member of the College Sports Communicators (CSC) formerly known as College of Sports Information Directors (CoSIDA) and Black College Sports Information Directors’ Association (BC-SIDA) and sits on the CoSIDA ‘Thank your SID’ committee and is a part of the mentor/mentee program. She is also serving as the secretary of the CIAA-SID committee and graduated from the 23-24 Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Class with CSC. She also is currently serving as the DII Atlantic Region Represntative.Â
