By: Sean Barker, Sports Editor

NEW HAVEN — Rick Leddy loves to tell stories.

Good thing, because for the past 36 years, his job has been to pass along stories to the media in order for them to be relayed to the public.

Leddy, the associate director of athletics/sports information director at Southern Connecticut State, retires after Wednesday, two days before his 58th birthday, ending a 40-year run at his alma mater.

No more stat crews, no more nomination slips, no more phone calls, e-mails and faxes to scores of media outlets across New England.

"The timing was just right," Leddy said.

When Leddy started working, he used a Teletype, an earlier version of a fax that weighed upward of 20 pounds and was carried in what looked like a trombone case. He wrote play-by-play and stats for games by hand. Football games were played at Bowen Field and indoor sports at Pelz Gym.

Today, his stats are computer-generated and accessible instantaneously world wide, thanks to the Internet. Football games are played on a synthetic surface at Jess Dow Field.

But the core of his job remains the same: to get student-athletes the recognition they deserve.

"It’s important to know when a story is worthwhile," said Leddy, whose role as secretary with the National Association of Basketball Coaches will expand after 22 years. "What’s a good human interest story, a story I can pitch? You only pitch stories you know you have a chance of getting published. If not, then I’m wasting my time and theirs. The time TV stations have, the space newspapers have, is less now. So you need to know your spots.

"It’s hard for people to understand what you do," said Leddy, who has the second-longest tenure of an SID in New England. "They always say, ‘so you go to basketball games.’ No, I work basketball games."

There are some long days. Conference and NCAA reports due in the morning, an afternoon game, followed by an evening doubleheader. In the past decade, Sunday games have become popular, the one day in the past he could always count on having off.

But Leddy doesn’t complain, noting he’s been doing what he loves for the past four decades.

His assistants, Kristen Altieri and Meghan Gannon, will take over in the interim.

Southern Connecticut is one of the most successful Division II programs in the nation. Leddy has been there for each of the Owls’ nine team national titles and all but one of the 67 NCAA individual championships. Southern sponsors 19 intercollegiate sports, comparable to many Division I programs.

"I’ve never bought the Division I-Division II thing," Leddy said. "Our kids are a little smaller, and a lot slower in some cases, but they are still the same. They have the same interests, the same competitiveness. I’ve really enjoyed working with them."

He and his wife, Nancy, have three children, Brendan, Colleen and Caitlin.

"Nothing is more important to him than his wife and children, and he was not going to let the demands of the office make him forget that," said Mark Mentone, the SID at Felician.

"I heard him on the phone one day telling a friend that ‘I have a baseball game today.’ Baseball was my responsibility, so when he hung up, I was worried because there was no game on my schedule.

"Rick, did I miss one?"

"Oh no, my son is pitching for North Haven High," Leddy said.

When Leddy was 11, a surgery to fix his femur had complications, leaving his left leg shorter than his right.

It took away his ability to play sports, but not his passion for them.

He was a student manager for both baseball and hockey at Hamden High, and while in college and shortly after he also worked at the New Haven Register, for the New Haven Blades and Hamden Bics of the old Eastern Basketball League.

It will be difficult in some ways to walk away.

"My wife teases me that if I’m driving down the street and see a baseball game, I’ll stop," Leddy said.

He said he will probably come back to watch the women’s basketball team this year; that he will miss watching Steve Armstrong play quarterback the next two years. But he will take time to see other college games, and head up to UConn to see former Southern soccer coach Ray Reid’s Huskies.

Leddy’s press releases have included the names of young men who went on to play and coach in the NFL such as Chris Palmer, Kevin Gilbride, Joe Andruzzi and Jacques Cesaire, and young women who went on to change the way women’s athletics were viewed such as Donna Lopiano, Joan Bonvicini, Marnie Dacko, Cathy Inglese.

Leddy has worked for each of the four athletic directors in the school’s history: Jess Dow, Ray DeFrancesco, Darryl Rogers and Pat Nicol.

"They weren’t just people you worked with, they are life-long friends," Leddy said.

Leddy himself has made quite an impression on his students and assistants.

At least 13 of his students and assistants have gone on to careers in sports information, journalism or sports management.

"Working with Rick was an honor," said Jason Southard, the SID at the Coast Guard Academy, who was a student assistant and later assistant for Leddy. "That’s the way he made you feel. You worked with him, not for him."

Southard has had one intern at the Coast Guard Academy, Leddy’s son, Brendan.

"I’m just in awe around Rick when he starts rattling off the names of so many athletes, writers, coaches from the Connecticut area," said Scott Ames, who is entering his 18th year as SID at Western Connecticut State and worked as a student assistant and later as an assistant for Leddy. "I wish I had half the memory he does."

"He taught me a lot and gave me a ton of guidance in just my one year under his tutelage, and more importantly, kept me enthusiastic about the world of college athletics," said Mark Jacobs, the assistant director of sports communications at Springfield College.

The stories are endless. The time he had to do play-by-play on a moment’s notice for a college gymnastics meet in the early days of ESPN. The road trips with Tom McCormack and longtime football coach Rich Cavanaugh. Or when DeFrancesco spent five minutes asking for directions to Springfield College, only to discover the woman he was asking was deaf.

Leddy’s storytelling won’t end. But now someone new will have to persuade others to tell Southern’s stories.