By Tom Merritt ('75)

The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once opined that there are no second acts in American lives. I’m not so sure.  I figure I’m on my second act for the third or fourth time.

Lately, I’ve gone back to my roots and in more ways than one. Nearly 12 years after leaving the day-to-day world of sports media relations, I’m back working the phones and hitting the SEND button. What surprises me, however, is that I’m doing so as a freelance communications advisor for a company in my boyhood hometown of Delhi, NY, a rural community about 40 miles from Cooperstown in the northern Catskill Mountains. The company, called Sportsfield Specialties Inc. (SSI), is a leading manufacturer of sports competition equipment, yet until 1998 it didn’t exist.

In June of 1969, I graduated from Delaware Academy & Central School along with 83 other students. Actually, it was 82 since one diploma was granted in absentia to a classmate who was then residing in the local jail. That fall I left for Syracuse University having little interest in what my little hometown had to offer.

When I entered the sports administration program at Ohio University in the summer of 1974 I had my sights firmly set on the big leagues of sports. Thanks to an internship at the National Football office in New York City, I soon got to a big league destination when I was hired as a publicist at NBC Sports late in 1975.

For the next 25 years or so I never thought that Delhi would ever be anything close to the big leagues of sports. I’ve since learned how wrong I was, for despite being located in an area that one resident described as “centrally isolated”, SSI has proven that it’s possible to be big league in a small town.

Throughout my career in sports media relations I’ve relished the role of storyteller whether it’s about NBC Sports’ telecast of an announcer-less NFL game in 1980 or about the Maryland family that didn’t realize they were responsible for naming 1989 Kentucky Derby winner Sunday Silence. Therefore, I was attracted to SSI not only as a small town success story, but also because of its efforts to enhance competition by helping athletes perform better and with greater safety.

SSI has built a national reputation in the sports construction industry by answering the call for versatility, safety, and efficiency one project at a time whether it’s a high school track in Shingle Springs, CA, Rosenblatt Stadium the longtime home of the College World Series in Omaha, NE, or the multi-sport athletic complex at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When it comes to my job of getting the media interested in a company that manufactures sports competition equipment, there’s no denying the impact of a famous client. In 2010, football returned to The Bronx, NY as the new Yankee Stadium played host to the first-ever New Era Pinstripe Bowl, the renewal of the Notre Dame-Army rivalry, and New York City’s Public Schools Athletic League championship game. All of the equipment needed to outfit the new Yankee Stadium for football, from goal posts to pylons to padding was supplied by SSI or its subsidiary, Promats Athletics in Salisbury, NC.

The story of SSI’s role in the conversion of Yankee Stadium for football was a natural for the metro-NY media.  Making it even more interesting was the fact that the initial phase of goal post installation--the ground sleeves--had to be done during the All-Star break in mid-July. When the process was completed in early November, the news photo of goal posts being raised in the iconic baseball venue signaled that Yankee Stadium was ready for football.

Football goal posts have come to symbolize growth and innovation at SSI. Since opening its own manufacturing facility in Delhi in 2004, SSI has become the country’s leading manufacturer of football goal posts, selling approximately 250 sets per year. In 2008, the company’s AdjustRight® goal posts were used at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, AZ for the Super Bowl matchup between the Giants and Patriots.

In 2010, SSI introduced the latest in goal post technology when it released the Ultimate AdjustRight® Rotating and Hinged Goal Post, which features a patent-pending hydraulic system that enables one person to lower the uprights to the field in less than 20 seconds. The combination of versatility, safety, and ease-of-use led to the installation of the Ultimate AdjustRight® at the Citrus Bowl Stadium in Orlando, FL, which each year plays host to high school and college football along with monster truck and motocross events. The same reasons were behind the addition of the Ultimate AdjustRight® to Parsons Field at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Even though NU dropped intercollegiate football after the 2009 season, it opted for the maximum versatility of the Ultimate AdjustRight® because of the heavy use Parsons Field gets as the home of the NU women’s and men’s soccer teams, its baseball team and the football team from neighboring Brookline High School.

SSI has proven that innovation sells especially when budgets are tight and multi-use facilities are vital. I expect that SSI’s focus on innovation will help make awareness building easier. The boom in sports television in the mid-70’s opened the door for me at NBC Sports, primarily because newspapers around the country were adding regular sports media columns to answer their reader’s curiosity about the inner workings of the business. I find that same fan curiosity at work today. Technology is a huge part of sports construction and fans are hungry to know more about the equipping and building of today’s sports venues.

Looking ahead, I’ll be working to build awareness not just for the Ultimate AdjustRight® goal posts, but for the latest SSI design advancements for its Porta Pitch® portable pitching mound and its ComBox® multi-purpose in-ground electrical junction box.  Also, there’s the story of the new modular press box for the baseball stadium at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY that will be built in Delhi and shipped for installation in March. And, not be left out, SSI subsidiary Promats Athletics, an industry leader in protective athletic padding and mats, has digitally created a distinctive Old Virginia look on the new outfield wall padding at Wake Forest Baseball Park in Winston-Salem. NC.

It’s easy to see that there’s lots of interesting stuff going on. Just what a good storyteller needs.

Tom Merritt was formerly Director of Sports Information for NBC-TV and Executive Director of Thoroughbred Racing Communications. He is also the inventor of a sports trivia game called BOX SCORE® for which he continues to seek business opportunities.