Former sports journalist Matt Vines stepped into assistant sports information director role in 2019 after serving three years as the assistant director of communication at Northwestern State.
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Vines will cover and promote men's basketball and track and field, assist on football and soccer and oversee graduate assistants on a variety of other sports.
Vines, a former sports writer at The Jackson (Tennessee) Sun, The (Monroe) News-Star and The (Shreveport) Times, began his sports information career as a graduate assistant in 2015 before joining the university as its assistant director of communications.
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Since becoming an SID, he's won a first-place feature writing award from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for a story he wrote about soccer player April Ficarrotta and her mother's battle with cancer and a second-place nod for a story featuring NSU co-head soccer coaches Jess and Anna Jobe and spending unexpected time with their newborn son Sterling during the early part of the pandemic.
In his print journalism career, Vines won two first-place feature awards and one third-place feature awards from the Tennessee Associated Press Managing Editors. He also won various other quarterly awards from his employer Gannett. He covered high school, college and a handful of professional sporting events in his 10 years in newspapers. Among the highlights include the 2007 College Football National Championship, the 2005 Southeastern Conference Championship, multiple Music City and Independence Bowls and a handful of New Orleans Saints, Dallas Cowboys and Memphis Grizzlies games.
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Vines is a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, and graduated from C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and from the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication. He earned his master’s degree in sport administration from Northwestern State in May 2016.Â
He is married to Patricia Vines and has two sons, Ivan and Oliver.
