The Eastern Athletic Communications Association (EAST-COMM) Executive Board today announced its 2026 award winners.  A total of five individuals were recognized and will be honored at the 2026 EAST-COMM Awards Banquet on the evening of Thursday, June 18 during the organization's annual workshop in Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the Genetti Hotel. For more information and to register for the workshop, click here.
 


There will be two recipients of the Bill Esposito Memorial Award as Ryan Mosher of Slippery Rock the 2025 recipient will be recognized. Elijah Adams from Alfred State is the 2026 Esposito Award Winner.  The 2026 recipient of the Ann King Advocacy Award is Jill Guise from Johns Hopkins.


Ken Johnson (posthumous) of MIT and Mark Fisher of Carnegie Mellon University are this year's winners of the Irving T. Marsh Award.  Geoff Hassard, the long-time sports information director at SUNY Oneonta and current Assistant Athletic Director at New England College, is this year's Pete Nevins Award for Distinguished Achievement winner.
 

The 2026 EAST-COMM Monahan and Wallace Media Award winner is Andy Malnoske of WETM-TV NBC 18.
 


2026 Bill Esposito Award – Elijah Adams (Alfred State University)
 
The Bill Esposito Award is presented each year to a graduating senior that worked in athletic communications and plans to pursue a career in athletics.
 
Elijah Adams is the 2026 recipient of the Bill Esposito Award. He currently serves as an Athletic Communications Assistant at Alfred State supporting game-day operations and athletic communications, including the Alfred State Sports Network. Additionally, he trains and assists fellow student workers, writes event recaps, and updates official record books on the athletics website. He also serves as the primary media contact for the women's soccer team. Adams also earned the Pioneer Student Service Award which is given to students who go above and beyond to support the Athletics Department throughout their time as a Pioneer.
 
Before joining SUNY Alfred State, Elijah was part of the Guest Services Event Staff with the Buffalo Bills from 2022 to 2025.
 
A senior marketing major, Adams is a State University of New York (SUNY) Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Student Ambassador, and Peer Leader at Alfred State. In March, he was one of 49 SUNY EOP students honored with the Norman R. McConney, Jr. Award for Student Excellence.
 
Adams attended the 2025 College Sports Communicators (CSC) Convention in Orlando as part of the Division III CSC Student Program.
 



2025 Bill Esposito Award – Ryan Mosher (Slippery Rock University)
Mosher spent three years working as a student-worker in the SRU athletic communication office. His responsibilities grew each year until he spent the 2025 spring semester doing a full-time internship to satisfy his final graduation requirement. He was involved in all facets of the office, from writing content for the website to working on statistics and video broadcast crews at home events.
 
Mosher was hired and has served as the SRU athletic communication graduate assistant for the 2025-26 school year upon his graduation in May 2025. He began his new role at The Rock in August and is the primary contact for the men's and women's soccer teams in the fall, women's basketball team in the winter and softball team in the spring for the next two seasons while he pursues a master's degree in business administration.
 


2026 Ann King Advocacy Award Winner – Jill Guise (Johns Hopkins)
 
The Ann King Advocacy Award is presented to a female with at least 15 years' experience in the Sports Information/Athletic Communications field.  The criterion for the award includes: the individual exhibiting strong advocacy for intercollegiate athletics; has mentored and improved the impact of women in the profession; and demonstrates passion to uplift those around them within the field. King was a staple in the Sports Information/Athletic Communication field and spent 37 years in the profession.  She was in her 15th season at Russell Sage College at the time of her passing, where she was hired as the institution's first full-time Director of Athletic Communications in the summer of 2009.
 
Jill Guise joined the Johns Hopkins Department of Athletics in February 2006 as the Assistant Director of Athletic Communications. In her tenure with the Blue Jays, Guise has hosted numerous Centennial Conference and NCAA Tournament events as well as promoted 56 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, 59 conference champions and 25 individual national champions. She has also been named the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Southern Division Men's SID of the Year twice and received the CoSIDA Achievement Award, College Division, in 2019.
 
 
Guise began her career in sports information as a graduate student at North Carolina State University. She spent two years as a student assistant in the NC State Media Relations office while pursuing her master's degree in sports management. While at NC State, she interned for the Carolina Hurricanes (NHL) in the summer of 2002 and served as the Media Relations Assistant for the Hurricanes in the fall of 2002.
 
 
After graduating from NC State in 2003, Guise landed her first full-time job as the Associate Director of Sports Information at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. Guise covered two NCAA Frozen Fours in her time with the Saints women's hockey team. After two and a half years in Canton, she relocated to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University.
 
 
Guise has served as the Secretary for EAST-COMM (formerly ECAC-SIDA) since the summer of 2008 and hosted the 2016 workshop in Lancaster, PA, along with her late husband, Scott.
 
Guise is a 2000 graduate of the University of South Carolina with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. She earned her master's from NC State University in 2003.
 
 
2026 Irving T. Marsh Award Winner – Ken Johnson (MIT)
 
The Irving T. Marsh Award is considered one of the highest honors the organization bestows. It is given annually to one or two members who, in the opinion of the membership and Executive Board, has exhibited excellence in the field of athletic communications. The awards are presented annually at the spring workshop. First presented in 1966, the awards are named after Irving T. Marsh, the ECAC Service Bureau founder and director until his retirement in 1973. After honoring one person from 1966 through 1990, the Marsh Award was expanded to its present format in 1991.
 
 
Johnson was in his eighth year as the Director of DAPER Communications, Promotions and Marketing at MIT and his 26th year in the Athletic Communications profession before his sudden passing in February 2024. He was a strong presence, primarily in the New England Region, during his career by having stops Assumption University for five years, Manhattanville College, the University of Bridgeport, and Saint Anselm College. Johnson began his career as an intern at Brown University.
 
 
Johnson served on the East-Comm Executive Board as the First Vice-President.  His work was well-respected across the nation as he earned the 2019 U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Excellence in Communications Award for NCAA Division III Track and Field. He received a College Sports Communicators (CSC) award for 25 years of service in the athletic communications field and was a member of the D3SIDA Divisional Cabinet within CSC. Johnson was additionally elected to the D3SIDA Board of Directors in the summer of 2019 and served as the Region 1 representative from 2019-2021.
 

2026 Irving T. Marsh Award Winner – Mark Fisher (Carnegie Mellon)
 
Mark Fisher has been Director of Athletics Communications at Carnegie Mellon since September 2004 after originally arriving in Pittsburgh from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa., where he served as Assistant Sports Information Director for two years. During his tenure at Carnegie Mellon, the Athletics Communications Office has promoted a total of 160 Academic All-America honorees selected by College Sports Communicators (CSC), formally College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). For 16 years. he oversaw the Athletics Corporate Partner Program and advertising and served as the departments IT liaison for seven years.
 
 
In June 2012, Fisher was the co-host of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Sports Information Directors Association (ECAC-SIDA) Workshop at the Renaissance Hotel in Pittsburgh, now known as Eastern Athletic Communications Association (EAST-COMM). He is a member of the College Sports Communicators (CSC), formally College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), as well as a member of EAST-COMM where he served on the executive board for five years. Fisher held the position of Past President in 2017-18, President in 2016-17, First Vice-President in 2015-16, Second Vice-President in 2014-15, and was the College Division Representative in 2013-14.
 
 
Fisher is a 2001 graduate of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania where he received his bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. While at Edinboro, he worked four years in the sports information department. During the summer of 2001 he interned with the Erie SeaWolves, a Double–A Affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, and then worked one year with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a Single-A Affiliate of the Cleveland Indians in Niles, Ohio.
 
 
2026 Pete Nevins Award for Distinguished Achievement – Geoff Hassard (SUNY Oneonta/New England College)
 
The Pete Nevins Award is a prestigious honor that is not voted on by the executive board each year, but rather is voted on by the former winners of the Nevins Award. It is awarded only in years that the former winners deem a worthy candidate has been nominated.  It was established in honor of longtime East Stroudsburg sports information director Pete Nevins.
 
Hassard began his career in college athletics as a graduate student at Springfield College before becoming the Director of Sports Information at WPI in 1994. He spent five years with the Engineers before moving to SUNY Oneonta, where he spent 23 years as Sports Information Director and later Assistant Athletic Director. Hassard retried from Oneonta in July 2022 and returned to college athletics a little over a year later as Assistant Athletic Director.  
 
 
Hassard received EAST-COMM's Irving T. Marsh Award for excellence in the field of athletic communications in 2014. He served on the executive boards of both EAST-COMM and CoSIDA and was the president of EAST-COMM in 2012-13.  
 

Monahan and Wallace Media Award – Andy Malnoske (WETM-TV NBC 18)
 
 
The Monahan and Wallace Media Award is bestowed upon an individual or organization in either print or electronic media "for outstanding coverage of eastern intercollegiate athletics." The award is named after longtime sportswriters Bob Monahan of the Boston Globe and Bill Wallace of the New York Times, both former winners of the award.
 
 
Malnoske, sports director of WETM-TV (NBC 18 in Elmira, NY), is a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist – having won in October 2024 with WETM-TV (Sports Story of The Year (News Single Shift) and in May 2015 with WENY-TV (Best On-Air Camera Talent Reporter for Feature Stories). Both Emmy Awards for Malnoske are the first and only in Elmira market history which spans nearly 70 years. Overall, Malnoske is a seven-time Emmy Nominee who has won multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards for regional sports reporting – including in four of the last seven years putting his work up for national story of the year.
 
 
 A 2002 graduate of Horseheads (N.Y.) High School, Malnoske has the honor of being the sports director at a station that serves his hometown. He has earned several broadcasting awards from the New York State Associated Press, Syracuse Press Club and NYS Broadcasters Association. In 2023, Malnoske was inducted into the Chemung County Sports Hall of Fame. One year later, he was inducted into the East Coast Professional Wrestling (ECPW) Hall of Fame. Malnoske is a 2007 graduate of Ithaca College who received the school's Young Alumnus of the Year award in 2016. He earned his master's degree from Shippensburg University in 2008.