Ira Thor, an award-winning national leader in athletic communications for two decades while working gamedays for both New York City NFL franchises, completed his 20th and final year as Assistant Director of Athletics for Strategic Communications and Marketing at New Jersey City University in 2019-20. He was elevated to Senior Director of University Communications and Media Relations in August, 2020.
Thor, 43, originally joined the institution in August 2000 as the sports information director and has seen his role evolve over the years, first as Director of Athletic Communications and most recently as Assistant Athletic Director for Strategic Communications and Marketing in 2019.
Thor has been responsible for all aspects of sports media relations, communications and marketing for one of the nation's fast-growing NCAA Division III athletics programs, now featuring 22 programs, including all content on the University's athletics website, NJCUGothicKnights.com.
A member of the athletics senior leadership team, he has been the sport administrator with direct oversight responsibilities for six athletic programs and coaching staffs—baseball, women's bowling, men's and women's golf and tennis—while serving on nearly a dozen job search committees. He also served as the department's scheduling coordinator. He has served as a member of the New Jersey Athletic Conference Board of Athletic Administrators, on the NJAC Championships Committee and as the league's men's volleyball chair in 2019-20.
Ira Thor at the mic as emcee of the
2013 NJCU Athletics Hall of Fame induction.
During his tenure at NJCU,
Thor has revolutionized the University's athletic communications efforts, with particular focus on the transformation of the office during the digital age. He has dramatically increased all forms of national media exposure, with NJCU athletics being featured in such television outlets as CBS, ESPN—more than 15 times—Fox Sports and MSG while securing placements in
Sports Illustrated [12 times],
ESPN The Magazine,
USA Today, The Associated Press and NCAASports.com. He increased the department’s media exposure and publicity efforts on an unprecedented local, regional and national scale for print and electronic media, and has conducted extensive research to develop and overhaul the athletic department’s historical records.
No communications office in NCAA Division III has had more perpetual success at obtaining major national coverage. In Fall 2019, NJCU was featured on ESPN
SportsCenter three times in 42 days, including a No. 2 and No. 3 Top Play.
Thor orchestrated the nomination process for NJCU legend
Bob Delaney to receive the
2020 NCAA Theodore Roosevelt Award—the National Collegiate Athletic Association's highest honor.
Delaney is the first recipient ever from a college or university in the state of New Jersey and only the second from a Division III public school.
Again in 2020,
Thor's four-year efforts to promote the inspirational story of men's basketball student-athlete
Sam Toney culminated in his being awarded the
2020 USBWA Most Courageous Award—the first-ever Division III male selected.
Thor developed NJCU's athletics website, NJCUGothicKnights.com, in November 2004, in conjunction with SIDEARM Sports and has directed five redesigns and relaunches over the last 16 years. He launched all of NJCU's social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and introduced '
GothicVision', NJCU's live streaming and game highlight platforms, and an iPhone and Roku app, constructing the entire streaming system from the ground up while serving as executive producer, play-by-play announcer and voiceover talent.
A key link to the past and the present of NJCU athletics as the school's historian,
Thor has chaired the Athletics Hall of Fame committee since 2001. He has overhauled the athletic department historical records, and in most sports, constructed records from scratch, developing comprehensive historical databases. Additionally, he nominated 24 of the 25
Academic All-District and all five Academic All-America recipients in school history. In 2006, he oversaw the development of NJCU’s comprehensive Athletics Hall of Fame display.
A multiple-award winner,
Thor is enshrined in two athletic Halls of Fame. In 2011 he was inducted into the North East Collegiate Volleyball Association (NECVA) Hall of Fame as an administrator. In 2007 he received the highest volleyball coverage award any SID in the profession can receive when the American Volleyball Coaches Association named him the Sports Information Finalist for the AVCA Grant Burger Media Award for Division I, II and III men's and women's volleyball, equivalent to the National SID of the Year for the sport. He won the AVCA Grant Burger Media Award for Division III in 2017, becoming the first SID to ever win the national award twice.
He is a five-time winner of the AVCA Grant Burger Media Award for men's volleyball as the NCAA Division III NECVA Region SID of the Year (2005, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015) and a two-time recipient as NCAA Division III Mid-Atlantic Region SID of the Year for women's volleyball (2006, 2007). He was the only Division III sports information director in the nation honored for both men's and women's volleyball in 2006.
A six-time CoSIDA honoree for his writing,
Thor has been honored as Best in the District five times in the Fred S. Stabley Sr. Writing Contest, including back-to-back years in 2019 and 2020. Additionally, NJCU's publications, led by
Thor, have won six awards since 2018 and four in 2020,
including the university's first-ever Best in the Nation citation.
In his athletic communications career, he has held several high-profile regional and national leadership positions within the profession. A regionally and
nationally recognized sports information leader,
Thor served as the fourth and the then youngest-ever President of D3SIDA, the Division III governing body of the College Sports Information Directors of America, from 2015-17,
a prestigious three-year term on the CoSIDA Board of Directors from 2014-17 and the final Chair of the College Division Management Advisory Council. He spent 10 years on the D3SIDA Board from 2009-2019 as Region 2 rep,
Second Vice President, First Vice President, President and Past President. As a CoSIDA Board member, he has made contributions to multiple efforts to improve the profession and raise important issues,
including uniform readability, while providing national statistical training,
including in the sport of volleyball.
Thor was the only individual in the history of CoSIDA to serve all three leadership positions---a CoSIDA Board Member, D3SIDA President and CDMAC Chair.
In August 2019,
Thor became the first athletic communications professional in history to serve on the NCAA Division III Baseball National Committee and only the second active SID to ever serve on the national committee of one of the three major men's sports (football, basketball, baseball). In 2018,
Thor was named to the NCAA Division III Women's Volleyball New York Regional Advisory Committee, becoming the first SID in the history of the NJAC to serve on a RAC and the first-ever athletic communications representative on a volleyball RAC in the country.
Thor has also held prominent positions in athletics outside of NJCU. Most notably, he has served as the Press Box Announcer for the New York Giants of the National Football League since late in the 2014 season and the Crew Chief/Head Statistician for the New York Jets since 2018.
Thor also can be heard at Red Bull Arena as a public address announcer for the New York Red Bulls and Sky Blue FC and as an announcer for New Jersey Copa FC. He has overseen head statistician duties for the New Era Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium since 2013 and has been an NCAA.com broadcast analyst for the NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Soccer national championship since 2017.
He has served as a national panelist in a number of Top 25 polls, including the D3hoops.com Division III men’s basketball (2004-present) and co-founder of the NCBWA/D3baseball.com Division III baseball (2008-present) poll. He is an annual announcer for the D3hoops.com Classic in Las Vegas.
On July 1, 2014 he became President of the New Jersey Collegiate Baseball Association (NJCBA). He has served the organization for 11 years (March 2004), most recently as the Division I, II and III communications director, overseeing the NJCBA’s annual and weekly awards program.
For 10 years (2002-11),
Thor was the Assistant Commissioner for Athletic Communications for the NECVA—the largest conference in the nation in any sport or division—publishing the 47-team conference’s weekly report, selecting the league’s award winners, overseeing the annual postseason awards, while also compiling statistical leaders, standings, and results while launching and managing NECVA.org and working closely with the NCAA statistical staff.
Active in the local community,
Thor was elected as a member of the Howell Township Board of Education in 2017 and re-elected in 2020 to a second term, receiving the most votes by a male candidate in a contested board election in the history of Howell. He
routinely volunteers hundreds of hours locally per year to his community.
Prior to NJCU,
Thor was a staff writer for the Bergen Record (Hackensack, NJ), covering amateur, high school, college, and professional sports from January 1999 to November 2000, in addition to compiling results for the paper’s award-winning sports section. He also spent time as a sportswriter for Worrall Community Newspapers in Essex County, NJ.
Before arriving at The Record, Thor spent more than three years as a promotions assistant for WQHT-FM 97.1 radio (HOT 97) in New York, and a year as a television production assistant at Phoenix Communications in South Hackensack. He also spent time at WGHT-AM in Pompton Lakes, NJ as a sports reporter and news producer from October 1996 through April 1997.
A January 2001 graduate of William Paterson University with a B.A. in Communications and a 1995 alumnus of Fair Lawn High School, he is currently pursuing an MBA at NJCU.
Thor was elected to the Fair Lawn High School Athletics Hall of Fame in October 2010 as part of the Cutters’ 1995 NJSIAA state championship boys’ volleyball team.
Thor resides in Howell, N.J. with his wife Kathryn, and three children—Gavin (17), Kendra (14) and Julia (6).
Final Update: Fall, 2020
