In 1973, Georgetown looked nothing like it does today. Fields sat where there are now parking lots and tennis courts have been replaced by dorms. However, one alumnus has observed every step of the construction. Senior Sports Communications Director Bill Shapland has devoted almost 25 years to Georgetown, both as a student and as an employee. He has witnessed not only the highs and lows of the basketball program, but also the many transformations of the University itself.
Shapland is responsible for fielding requests for interviews with basketball players and coaches, as well as offering counsel to the Athletic Department administration and the rest of the Sports Information staff. Despite his long tenure with the Athletic Department and his extensive experience in communications, Shapland is modest about his position.
“I make the basketball team run the way the custodial service makes the University run,” he said. “It’s something that needs to be done consistently and with little visibility. Sports Information is a service organization.”
Shapland’s first year with Sports Information is also the most infamous season in Georgetown basketball history: 1984-85. He was forced to quickly familiarize himself with the sports media, on both a local and national level, to work with a team that would eventually reach the national championship game.
On the wall of Shapland’s office hangs a framed Sports Illustrated cover from 1984. It depicts legendary Georgetown basketball Head Coach John Thompson, then-President Ronald Reagan and basketball star and Georgetown senior Patrick Ewing. Just four weeks after accepting a position with the University’s Sports Information department, Shapland was responsible for coordinating the photo shoot for this epic cover.
“I was forced into a learning crucible,” Shapland said. “I came in without any background in sports information or public relations and was representing the defending national champions during Ewing’s senior year.”
Although in 1984 Shapland may have been new to the world of Georgetown athletics, he was certainly no stranger to the University itself. As an undergraduate at the University, Shapland was the executive producer of theater group Mask and Bauble. He was also Vice President of the Quadrangle House Council, which provided student input in housing issues. Shapland recalls approving the furniture to be used in Henle Village, which at the time was just being built.
Shapland received an undergraduate degree in English in 1973 and returned to Georgetown to pursue a Masters in English literature. To finance his Graduate school studies, Shapland accepted a position with the Athletic Department. At the time, a career at Georgetown was not something that Shapland had anticipated.
“If someone had asked me, I would have said that I was more likely to walk on the moon than work here,” he said.
Perhaps Shapland’s success as Director of Sports Communications can be attributed to his theory about the role of sports at Georgetown. According to Shapland, sports teams are a venue for education.
“The objective is for you to learn about yourself through different stimuli, whether in class, with a team or with an extracurricular activity,” he said.
Although Shapland’s professional life is devoted to Georgetown basketball, he has other interests outside of sports. Shapland has “a huge interest in science fiction” and has written three novellas and over two dozen short stories that have been published on an Internet site that he created. He said that he founded the site to satisfy a desire to write and to teach others about the genre.
A few months after being hired by the Athletic Department, Shapland was interviewed by a reporter from Syracuse who pointed out that then-head coach John Thompson had gone through three Sports Information Directors in two years. Shapland responded that he was excited to be working with Thompson, at which the reporter quipped that Shapland should also be excited for the job search he would surely face in the near future.
Over 20 years later, Shapland is still proving that reporter wrong. He is one of a handful of people at Georgetown who can provide the institutional memory needed to counteract the constantly changing face of the campus.
“Georgetown is radically different today,” Shapland said. “A challenge we face is to maintain that we are still the same school and we are still doing things the same way despite the cosmetic changes.”
