Vice President for Athletics Kim Pate has announced the promotion of Jeremy Zalacca to Senior Associate Athletic Director for Athletic Communications. Zalacca has been at Lenoir-Rhyne for the past five years and helped the department’s communications department reach new heights during his tenure.

“Jeremy Zalacca has developed our athletics communications department into one of the top performing programs in Division II,” said Kim Pate. “He brings tremendous leadership, vision, creativity, and a relentless drive to continuously elevate his area and the broader department. He does an amazing job of showcasing all the great things our student-athletes and coaches achieve and telling the LR story and I look forward to seeing the impact he will have on our broader department in his new role.”

“Lenoir-Rhyne is a special place and I have been blessed to work with some of the most talented teams, student-athletes and co-workers that Division II has to offer,” said Zalacca. “I can’t thank Kim Pate enough for believing in my five years ago and allowing me the ability to advance here at LR. I can’t wait to see what the future holds in Hickory.”

During his tenure, Zalacca and his staff were named South Atlantic Conference Athletic Communications Department of the Year for the 2020-21 season. That year, the department set a record with 10 CoSIDA Awards for Excellence in Publications. Since then, the Bears have earned 22 publication awards and eight of his pieces of work have been deemed “Best in the Nation” over the past three years.

In his role, Zalacca oversees: Lenoir-Rhyne social media, website maintenance, statistics and awards for all student-athletes, press releases, media relations, photography, graphic design, live broadcasts and all digital and creative content produced at LR.

During his time, LR led the conference in viewership of live broadcasts in the 2019-20 season as well as the 2022-23 year with over 136,000 viewers during those two years. Zalacca helped completely overhaul the live broadcast of events to include replays, in-game interviews, multiple camera angles and enhanced broadcast talent. Zalacca completely re-designed the lrbears.com website and updated and enhanced all Lenoir-Rhyne record books.

Zalacca has helped improve the graphic design and photography as well as the social media presence of the department and its teams. He has helped garner multiple awards for student-athletes. Zalacca has also produced game notes for basketball, lacrosse, softball and baseball for the first time in department history and also produced media guides for non-football programs for the first time since 2007.

In his tenure, he has developed the the Athletic Communications Department staffing and roles to better align with the ever changing and evolving landscape of athletic communications. In addition to an assistant sports information role, Jeremy created dedicated positions to head up digital and creative media as well as graphic design and photography.

Zalacca has served on the SAC Championship and Awards Committee, the D2SIDA Men’s Basketball Regional Rankings Committee and the D2CCA Women’s Basketball All-Region Selection Committee and is a member of the NCAA Division II 50th Year Athletic Communications working group.