Jay Monahan was named Director of Athletic Communications in March 2022 after serving 10 years as Assistant Director of Sports Information at Marywood.
Monahan is charged with promoting all of the Pacers' 22 athletic programs plus esports. His responsibilities include compiling and disseminating statistics, results and press releases to the media; maintaining website and athletic archives; and nominating student-athletes for athletic and academic awards. He heads the annual Athletics Recognition Ceremony's awards committee and sustains the athletic department's social media accounts. He is also the chair of the Atlantic East Conference's Sports Information Directors.
In addition, he served as the department's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee chair from 2012-15, leading the group to two Eastern Pennsylvania Polar Bear Plunges and Special Olympics New Jersey volunteer efforts. His 2014 Landmark Conference Swimming Championships live blog won the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) Fred Stabley Writing Award in Division III District 2.
A native of Wilkes-Barre, Monahan previously served as an athletic communications assistant at Penn State University in State College, where he acted as the primary media contact for the Nittany Lions' baseball, field hockey, and women's swimming and diving teams. He helped advance Penn State's program's social media strategies, and assisted in coordinating game day and special events operations for its football and basketball teams.
Prior to Penn State, he began his career as an assistant sports information director at Goucher College in Towson, Md. in 2007-08. He also worked as a a production assistant for the State College Spikes minor league baseball team in 2009.
For the past eight years, Monahan writes for the (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader. His contributions to the newspaper's college football reporting in the first Penn State home game following the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal led to a first-place Division II prize in sports event coverage at the 2012 Pennsylvania Newspaper Association Keystone Press Awards. He is the newspaper's beat writer for high school girls soccer and swimming. Monahan frequently provides coverage to its Penn State, high school football, and minor league baseball reporting.
He currently volunteers as a speech and debate coach at E.L. Meyers High School. His teams have won three Pennsylvania High School Speech League district championships since 2012. Monahan has also served as a faculty advisor for the Campus Ministry's Hurricane Harvey volunteer relief efforts in Houston, Texas.
Monahan received his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He received a master's degree in higher education administration from Marywood in 2021. He resides in Wilkes-Barre.
