University of Minnesota Athletics
Molde Joins Athletic Communications Staff
8/25/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Veteran sports information director Michael Molde has joined the University of Minnesota Athletic Communications Office as an assistant and will handle media relations for the Golden Gopher women's basketball program for the 2010-11 season, director of athletic communications Garry Bowman announced today.
"Mike brings a wealth of experience to this position and will be a great asset to head coach Pam Borton and her staff as the primary media contact for Gopher women's basketball," Bowman said. "He has also worked closely with our athletic communications staff over the past couple of years and I expect him to make a seamless transition to this new role. We are excited that he is joining us."
Molde inherits his new role with the Gophers' women's basketball program from associate athletic communications director Becky Bohm, who will be adding men's and women's swimming & diving as well as other special projects to her duties.
For the past two years, Molde has assisted with coverage of the Golden Gophers' football and men's basketball programs, handling the in-game blog duties on GopherSports.com for home games and writing game recap stories and feature articles. He also was the primary contact for Minnesota's softball program during its 2009 season.
"I am truly excited about the opportunity to work with the women's basketball program at the University of Minnesota and to join such a top-notch Athletic Communications staff," Molde said. "For the past two years, I've been volunteering my time on game days with the specific purpose of preparing myself for a chance like this. Golden Gopher women's basketball has such a proud history, especially over the last decade, and I look forward to successfully promoting the program."
Molde has an extensive background in athletic media relations, having served as Director of Sports Information at three schools - Kalamazoo College, Wabash College, and Creighton University - while also working as an assistant sports information director at Northern Illinois University.
At Creighton, Molde was the primary contact for the Bluejays' men's basketball program, which advanced to a pair of NCAA Tournaments, while also keeping the official computerized statistics at the NCAA College World Series. He also served as the men's basketball contact at NIU, where he helped to promote the Academic All-American of the Year for men's hoops.
During his tenure at Wabash, he received five citations for excellence in publications from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), and he served as a media relations assistant at the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Boys' 18 & 16 National Championships while at Kalamazoo.
A 1994 graduate of Western Michigan University, Molde received his bachelor of arts degree in organizational communication and spent three years as a student assistant in WMU's Office of Sports Information. He spent all three seasons as the primary contact for the Broncos' women's basketball and softball programs. Following his graduation, Molde did a one-year sports information internship at Lehigh University, where he also worked as the women's basketball contact.
Molde and his wife, Carrie Albers, reside in New Brighton with their six-year old son, Eric. His father, Al, is the Director of Athletics at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.
