CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Champaign Swarm have added three front-office personnel and an athletic trainer ahead of the team’s inaugural season, General Manager Jim Sheppard announced Thursday.
Veteran Mark Rieger will serve as athletic trainer for the Swarm, while Scott Beatty joins the club as the Director of Broadcasting and Media Relations. Rachael Graham and Ashley Paulus will serve in a variety of roles covering game operations, marketing and promotions.
“We have assembled an impressive staff with solid skill sets,” Sheppard said. “A lot is going on with the Swarm and the rest of the league. I’m excited to move forward as a team toward our first season.”
Rieger is the director of Carle Sports Medicine and brings 25 years of experience as a certified athletic trainer. The UI graduate is the athletic trainer for Parkland College athletics, serving eight sports and 150 athletes. Rieger previously spent 13 years as the athletic trainer for Mahomet-Seymour High School. He is provided to the Swarm by Carle Sports Medicine.
Beatty is an experienced play-by-play announcer heard regularly on local airwaves as a news reporter and sports announcer at WDWS-AM in Champaign. There he contributes to University of Illinois and area high school athletics coverage. Beatty has spent five years broadcasting minor league baseball with professional teams in Rockford, Ill., and Sioux Falls, S.D. A UI graduate, Beatty cut his sports broadcasting teeth at Parkland College where the Swarm will play their home games. The Urbana resident will broadcast all Swarm games on Coaches Aid, the online broadcasting outlet of the Midwest Professional Basketball Association.
Graham is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois with a degree in sports management. She most recently worked with GameDay USA, working in marketing and operations of youth travel baseball tournaments. She also served as an operations intern with the UI women’s basketball team for the 2013-14 season. Graham hails from nearby St. Joseph, Ill.
Paulus is pursuing a degree in Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois. The Lincoln, Ill., native brings experience as a student assistant in athletic development with the UI Division of Intercollegiate Athletics and as an event coordinator with the Georgia Games, an Olympic-style, multi-sports festival for amateur athletes in Georgia. She also serves as a youth basketball coach in Champaign.
The Champaign Swarm are members of the six-team Midwest Professional Basketball Association and Champaign-Urbana’s only professional sports franchise. The club begins its inaugural season at 3 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2015, in the Dodds Athletic Center at Parkland College against the St. Louis RiverSharks. More information is available at www.champaignswarm.com.