Ricky Baptist joined the University of Texas Permian Basin athletic staff as Sports Information Director in July 2024.
Baptist is the primary media contact and oversees all aspects of internal and external communications for each of the 14 intercollegiate sports programs in the UTPB Athletics Department. He coordinates and maintains all operations of the Falcons’ official website, www.utpbfalcons.com, and all social media networks. His duties also include gathering and maintaining official statistics; distributing news releases to hometown, regional and national media; coordinating interview requests for players, coaches and staff; and overseeing live audio and video of home contests.
Before joining UTPB, Baptist spent three years as the Director of Athletic Communications at NCAA Division III Denison University in Granville, Ohio. With the Big Red, Baptist served as the primary media contact, promoted all 26 sports, and oversaw all aspects of internal and external communications for each varsity sport program. During his first year at Denison in 2021-22, Baptist helped the Big Red host the NCAA Baseball Regional for the first time in program history, as well as hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Women's Lacrosse Tournament. At the conference level that season, Denison hosted the North Coast Athletic Conference Volleyball Tournament for the first time in program history, hosted the NCAC Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving Championships for the eighth year in a row, hosted the NCAC Men's Tennis Championship, and hosted the NCAC Field Hockey and Men's Lacrosse Tournament Championship games. Throughout his three years at Denison, Baptist helped the Big Red host three NCAA Baseball Regional Tournaments, regional tournaments for both men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse, conference tournaments for both men's tennis and women's tennis, three NCAC Men's Lacrosse Tournament Championships, and three NCAC Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving Conference Championships. In addition, the Big Red won the North Coast Athletic Conference's Dennis M. Collins All-Sports Championship Trophy during all three years. In addition to his sports information duties at the collegiate level, each June, Baptist served as the official statistician for the 2022 and 2023 OHSAA Division I and Division II Men’s and Women’s State Championship games at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio.
Prior to Denison, Baptist was the Director of Sports Information at Webber International University, an NAIA school in Babson Park, Florida. At Webber, Baptist was responsible for all public and media relations pertaining to the institution's 24 intercollegiate sports, athletic department publications, the athletic department's website, statistical and historical record-keeping for all sports, and other promotional activities surrounding the athletic department. In the summer of 2019, Baptist oversaw the redesign of the new and improved Webber Athletics website, helping Webber stay cutting edge while strengthening its communication with the Warrior fan base. In December 2018, Baptist worked the NAIA Football National Championship game, assisting the NAIA national office with official statistics for the contest. He also worked as the sports information contact/statistician for the 2018 Sun Conference Women’s Volleyball Tournament held on campus and as the official statistician for the 2021 Sun Conference Softball Tournament held in Clermont, Florida. During his time at Webber, Baptist earned four top-10 honors in the NAIA-SIDA Publications & Media Contest, including finishing in seventh place in the features stories category of the Dr. Jack Bell Writing Contest in 2018 followed by a fifth-place finish in the publicity videos category in 2019. Most recently in 2021, he finished in fifth place in the sport posters category of the Walt McAlexander Publications Contest and was 10th in the season/game highlight videos category of the Digital Media Production Contest.
Before joining the Webber Warriors, Baptist worked as an Associate Content Producer at CBS Sports Digital (Carlsbad, Calif.), and he also spent the same 2016-17 school year as the Sports Information Director at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, Calif.). At CBS, Baptist was responsible for providing general maintenance and troubleshooting services across the company's entire network of partner athletics websites. At MiraCosta, he helped publicize the first-ever California Community College Athletic Association State Championship for the Spartans’ beach volleyball team, the first state title since the early 1980’s for any of the school’s athletics programs.
Baptist spent the 2015-16 school year as the Sports Information Assistant at Milligan College (Johnson City, Tenn.) where he assisted with the day-to-day operations of the Sports Information Office and worked as one of two sports information contacts for the Buffaloes’ 24 intercollegiate sports. In the Spring of 2016, Baptist served as a sports information/media contact at the 2016 Appalachian Athletic Conference Track & Field Championships held in Sevierville, Tennessee. Prior to his time at Milligan and during his time in graduate school, Baptist was the Sports Information Specialist at Heartland Community College (Normal, Ill.), where he served as the website administrator for the Hawks' four varsity sports, and also moonlighted as the Public Address Announcer for Illinois State University Redbird Softball (NCAA Division I).
Baptist’s previous experience at the NCAA Division II level came as he spent four years as the Student Sports Information Director, including one year as the interim sports information contact, at the University of Illinois Springfield (Springfield, Ill.). With the Prairie Stars, Baptist assisted the sports information operations for 11 varsity sports as the school transitioned from NAIA to NCAA Division II. Baptist worked in UIS' sports information office as a student, managing statistics for the baseball, basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball teams; assisting with writing and producing game stories; and developing and maintaining the athletics web site. Additionally, he helped host two Great Lakes Valley Conference Men’s Basketball Championships and numerous Illinois High School Association (IHSA) basketball and soccer super-sectionals.
Baptist holds a Master of Science degree in communication from Illinois State University (’15) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication, with a minor in sociology, from the University of Illinois Springfield (’13).
