Delaware coaches tweet thoughts, results

After an exciting win against Drexel in the women's basketball CAA tournament on Friday, assistant coach Chris Campbell alerted fans in an unusual way.  

"Gutsy win! 3rd game of the year to go to OT w Drexel- three battles. This time Hens prevail scoring the last 11 points of the game," he tweeted.

Campbell said he uses Twitter to keep the team's fans and his family in the loop about both his life and the games. Campbell tweets about games, scores and even his opinions on the Oscars.

The Twitter accounts started by university coaches and players allow them to tell more of their story than just game scores. Campbell said he uses Twitter to let fans know who he is off the court.

Tweeting has become somewhat common among university athletes and coaches alike, said assistant director of athletics Scott Selheimer.

The athletic department's Twitter feed gives Delaware press releases to fans, but Selheimer hopes to develop it further in the future to include more information. So far, the account has over 400 followers since its launch in June, and Selheimer is happy with the progress.

"I could foresee that as Twitter becomes more and more popular as each of our coaches would want to branch out and have Twitter accounts," he said.

Selheimer said he has seen individual teams with their own Twitter feeds at other colleges. If coaches at the university were to start their own Twitter accounts, it would be up to them to update.

Twitter opens up a lot of opportunities to better connect with fans, but not everyone is a fan of the social media phenomenon in the college sports world.

Delaware's NCAA compliance officer, Kerri Cebula, said coaches are expected not to tweet about information regarding recruiting. Coaches are not allowed to tweet whether or not they are actively recruiting a player.

"They can't bring it up, you can confirm yes but they can't say yes they are without someone asking the question," she said.

Coaches are also unable to speak about anything that might impact the game, as sports betting is now legal in Delaware. Comments about injuries or which players will be playing can only be released by the university's press releases and not by coaches on Twitter feeds or any other social media.

"I say be careful about posting about student athlete injuries because you don't know who's going to take that information," Cebula said.

Coaches are discouraged from tweeting about sports gambling, which is a particularly difficult issue because it is somewhat out of the university's hands.

"The gambling issue is kind of tricky because I think it's on a level far above what we as an institution could investigate," she said.

Other than injury and recruiting, the coaches are able to tweet about whatever they want with caution, but Cebula continues to watch the feeds just in case.

"I monitor the Twitter accounts," she said. "Our coaches are good at understanding the rules but I still check up just to make sure."

Cebula noted other school's use of Twitter throughout the various sports programs and said it may be something the university explores as the social media programs become more developed.

Selheimer only sees more possibilities for Twitter to expand in the athletics department.

"We could potentially expand in the future to do more in-game tweets and that kind of thing for football, basketball and lacrosse," Selheimer said.