Of course, the truth is that none of us, as members of the media, can do what we do without sports information directors. They work long hours, with few days off, and they spend countless hours putting up with the likes of me.

I put it that way because I'm sure I was not easy for Kathy to deal with when I was a student writing for The Dartmouth. When I started, I was one of the least professional student writers imaginable. When I covered football and basketball, I didn't sit with the rest of the media. I was playing trombone in the Dartmouth band, and to get quotes for my stories, I would e-mail the players on the team I knew.

A word to any student writers who may be reading this: that's not what you do, and I'm guessing that if you tried that with anyone else, you'd be shut down nine times out of ten. But Kathy never complained, except when I got something wrong. She let me do things the way I was doing them. It wasn't until my senior year, when I started covering men's hockey - which had a different Dartmouth sports information contact - that I learned about having to go through the SID for interviews, or getting credentialed for games, or all the other things that are part of my routine now as someone who gets paid to do this.

Why did Kathy let me do things the way I did them? Obviously, she understood Dartmouth athletics. She understood that it was a small school, with a llimited number of students who cared enough about the teams I was writing about to put in the time that I was willing to put in. More than that, I think she understood me, and she allowed me to do the things that I loved to do, and if that meant I was something less than a professional, well, ok.

That didn't mean that I was allowed to get things wrong, of course. Once, my senior year, I wrote, incorrectly, that a top player on the women's lacrosse team - Katieanne Christian, who would later be a Tewaaraton Trophy finalist - had not played in a particular game because of a knee injury that had given her trouble previously. I had asked Kathy about why she hadn't played, and she suggested that could be the reason.

Like an idiot, I included the words "according to Dartmouth Sports Information" in my sentence about Katieanne missing the game. I got an angry e-mail from Kathy over that one - the subject line read, "You're killing me!" - and felt horrible. The truth is that the knee injury wasn't enough to keep Katieanne out of the game - I think she was sick - and my writing that it was the injury was an insult to how tough she was.

I always said that there were two people in the Dartmouth athletic department that I was ever scared of, and Kathy was one of them. A lot of that had to do with how much Kathy cared about Dartmouth and its student-athletes. She cared about how Katieanne was presented in my article. She cared about the men's basketball team, which she baked cookies for when they went on the road. She cared about all of them, for 24 years.

I was fortunate to be in the press box at Agganis Arena the night that they announced the retirement of longtime SID Ed Carpenter, and I was one of the writers who gave Ed a standing ovation, with the student section chanting, "Ed! Ed! Ed!" It was a truly rare moment when a sports information director got the credit he deserved from someone besides his colleagues in the athletic department and the media.

I've found myself thinking about that moment in the 24 hours since I learned that Kathy had died, and I wish that that treatment could be given to more sports information directors who put in the long hours with little thanks, and most of all, I wish that it could have been given to Kathy.

If you get the chance to do so, say, "Thank you," to a sports information director. They care about the team you love just as much as you do, and they work a lot harder than you know. Personally, I'll say this:

Thank you, Kathy, for allowing me to do what I loved to do.