Danielle Whaley is in her fifth year on the athletic communications staff at Carson-Newman. She serves as the primary contact for the men's soccer program while serving as the secondary contact for baseball, plus men's and women's basketball.

Along with her media relations duties, Whaley has used her content-creation and digital design skills to collect 11 national honors from the College Sports Information Directors of America's (CoSIDA) Publications and Digital Design Contest throughout her tenure. In that time, the communications office has brought in 27 honors in the contest, 12 of those coming in 2021 to double the previous high set by the group in 2020.

Of her 11 laurels, she has received three best in the nation nods since 2020, those being in the categories of Video Program/Athlete Feature with "Eagles try to Guess the 90s," Fall Game Notes - College and Men's Soccer Media Guide. Most of her laurels have come in both the motion graphics/GIFs and video feature categories, receiving three and two awards for each, respectively.

The Sevierville, Tennessee natives most recent year at C-N culminated with five CoSIDA nods, helping the C-N Athletic Communications department to have the third most accolades in the country among all NCAA divisions with 12 total. Along with first-place acknowledgments for the men's soccer game notes and media guide, she won best cover for a men's soccer media guide. Whaley rounded out her honors with a third-place finish in college posters for her men's soccer schedule and fifth for motion graphics/GIFS with her football National Signing Day graphic.

Aside from gold in Video Program/Athlete Feature in 2020, she brought home silver for her men's soccer media guide, bronze for her men's soccer season recap infographic and a fifth-place finish for her national signing day motion graphic.

 

Welcome to the nest

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In her second year, Whaley landed on the CoSIDA award list once again, this time in the Motion Graphics/gifs category for her work on a National Signing Day gif for the football program. Her gif earned bronze at the college level.

Following her inaugural year with the Eagles, Whaley's submission for the Video Feature - College category garnered eighth-place recognition, shining the light on C-N football player Diantae Thomas' transition to the Eagles split-back veer option attack during his final year of college.

Prior to joining the communications department at C-N, Whaley spent three summers with the Tennessee Smokies, the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, as a promotions assistant and on-field host. With the Smokies, she produced graphics and videos for in-game use on the videoboard, hosted both the live and pre-recorded Game Day Show for select games, contributed to Bear Trax, the weekly television show, through interviews and standups and managed the Rally Crew with inning-by-inning schedules for on-field promotions. 

Whaley made her way to Mossy Creek in August 2017 after graduating Summa Cum Laude from the University of Tennessee. While there, she served as a student intern for the athletic department's media relations staff where she wrote game recaps for basketball, baseball and softball while also writing student-athlete and staff features. She contributed to the Tennessee Journalist, the digital news sit for UT's School of Journalism and Electronic Media, for just under four years as a sports correspondent and host of the Triple Play Podcast.