Dave Caspole is the Senior Associate Athletic Director at Westfield State University as of summer 2024. Earlier on in his career, he worked as Senior Development Coordinator for Athletics and the Assistant Director of Development. In his current position, he is in charge of the WestfieldStateOwls.com website. He also works on gameday live stats, has developed a variety of the Owls social media channels, and media relations, amongst other things.
He graduated from Westfield State University with a degree in Mass Communications. After he graduated, he worked as assistant SID at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., which he stayed at for four years. After that, Caspole spent two years at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt. He later spent one year at RIT followed by other jobs he was at for a short duration. He decided to work for his alma mater that he has now been working at for over 15 years.
He gives a unique perspective on sports he participated in to his job now.
Note that this conversation has been edited lightly for clarity.
Q: Did you play any sports as a kid?
A: I played everything, but not very well.
Q: When did your love for sports begin, when did it develop?
A: Pretty quickly. I’d say somewhere around 7 or 8 years old. I followed the World Series very closely and sort of became a Dodgers fan. From there, I was pretty much all sports all the time.
Q: Was your family into sports too, or just you?
A: I’d say my mom and dad were probably casual fans. My brother was pretty into it, baseball at the time.
Q: And switching over a little bit, what part of your job do you find most rewarding?
A: It’s always working with people…being able to tell student athletes stories whether they have a significant statistical accomplishment, win a championship, overcome an obstacle. Those are the most fun stories to tell. There’s a lot of aspects I enjoy, like I enjoy media, I enjoy writing, you know there are worse things than sitting at the 50 yard line for a game when we work in game events.
Q: I am just curious, do you have a favorite professional athlete?
A: I would say probably Steve Garvey the Dodgers first baseman was probably the first and most significant athlete that I followed.
Q: Is there any Westfield State game you have been to that’s your favorite or one that stands out to you the most?
A: It’s tough to pick one. I would say we’ve had both men’s and women’s basketball championships in the last 7 or 8 years. The women played Framingham here in the conference championship and the Woodward Center was absolutely packed. In February in 2020 just before the pandemic kicked in, a conference championship game against Worcester when it got down to the buzzer. That was probably the biggest crowd we ever had in the winter time for a game. It was a highly competitive game and there was a shot late in the game that made us win.
