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The College Sports Communicators (CSC) recently announced that Brian Laubscher, director of internal communications at Washington and Lee University, will receive the CSC Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization’s annual convention in Orlando this June.
The national award is presented to members who have served at least 25 years in the profession and who are retiring, have retired, or have left the athletic communications profession. Recipients are voted on by the Special Awards Committee, and this year the CSC will honor 19 members with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Laubscher has served W&L since 1998, first as the sports information director, then as director of athletic communications, where he handled internal and external communications functions for all university athletics affairs. He was promoted to director of internal communications in May 2022.
During his career, Laubscher has served in a number of roles at the conference and national level, including chair of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) Sports Information Directors (2007-2009) and chair of the College Sports Information Directors Association (CoSIDA) Scholarship Committee (20182022). He received the ODAC Sports Information Office of the Year Award three times, as well as the CoSIDA 25-Year Award in 2021 and the CoSIDA President’s Award in 2022. CoSIDA rebranded itself as the College Sports Communicators in the summer of 2022.
“I’m honored to have my work and contributions to the field of athletic communications recognized by the College Sports Communicators organization,” said Laubscher. “I believe that at its core, the profession is about utilizing relationships to share stories of athletic success. I thoroughly enjoyed the friendships I was able to forge with various media members, students, coworkers, parents and alumni, as well as my counterparts at colleges all across the country.”
Laubscher played a significant role in the advancement of W&L’s athletics communications and operations over the years, including modernizing athleticsrelated events such as the annual W&L Athletic Awards Ceremony and the W&L Athletics Hall of Fame.
He improved athletics’ digital footprint by introducing live video streaming services, expanding photography services, and spearheading the use of digital communications resources like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Laubscher was also instrumental in the development of W&L’s athletics website and building it out to its nearly 100,000 pages of current and archived athletics information.
Prior to his arrival at W&L, Laubscher was an athletics communications assistant at Lafayette College, and he’s also worked in the athletic communications offices at James Madison University and California University of Pennsylvania. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sports management from Slippery Rock University.
