For Immediate Release
Contact: Wayne Block, Christopher Newport
(757) 594-7382

February 8, 2002


Keys, Skeens Named VaSID Distinguished Service Award Winners

Newport News, Va. – Kevin Keys, the founder of the Virginia Sports Information Directors Association (VaSID) and former Liberty University Sports Information Director, and Col. Earl “Bud” Skeens, longtime tennis coach at Ferrum College, have been named the latest recipients of the VaSID Distinguished Service Award.
 
The award is given to those deemed by the VaSID membership to have done outstanding work in the promotion of Virginia college athletics and the concept of the student-athlete for a minimum of 20 years. The award was first presented in 1987 and has been given to 21 individuals since that time.
 
Keys, pictured at left, served as full-time Sports Information Director at Liberty University from 1977-85. Prior to that he founded the Sports Information Office and served its first Sports Information Director as a student from 1975-77. He was the founding member of VaSID and guided the organization through its formative years. He served as Secretary-Treasurer and helped formulate the first set of by-laws and activities that the organization continues today.
 
He later moved to West Virginia University where he served as Sports Publications Director from 1985-2000. He currently serves as Vice President at Morgantown Printing & Binding in Morgantown, West Virginia.
 
Skeens, pictured at right, coached tennis at Ferrum for 26 years and also headed the programs at Franklin County and Radford High Schools for a number of years. At Ferrum he had a 345-41 record and at one time his teams won 77 consecutive matches. During another period they won 99 out of 100 tennis matches. He was a seven-time Cavalier-Tarheel Conference Coach of the Year.
 
But beyond coaching he was renowned as a teacher and mentor to student-athletes. A professor at Ferrum for 37 years, he has been named the school’s Teacher of the Year three times and was given the Sears-Roebuck Foundation College Teaching and Campus Leadership Award in 1990.
 
A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he helped established the College’s Army ROTC program, while in tennis he continues to assist with the Ferrum program. The Franklin County Recreation Department, located in nearby Rocky Mount, has begun sponsoring a group of tournaments known as “The Bud Skeens Classic Series.”
 
The awards will be presented at VaSID’s annual meeting in early June. For more information, please contact Wayne Block at Christopher Newport University at (757) 594-7382.
 
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