By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
When Todd Sharrock used his love of sports to take a position with a fledgling hockey organization in the middle of football country, it was anybody’s guess to how that story would end. Luckily, that path led him back to the state of Ohio and landed him an opportunity with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Hockey is not typically the favorite sport of someone living in Crawford County, but Sharrock said he became a fan while he was in high school when Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, and the Edmonton Oilers dominated the league.
“I was a big sports fan so I’d watch hockey on TV when it was on,” Sharrock remembered. “I really fell in love with the game. I really kind of stumbled into hockey – I never set out to work for a hockey team.”
Sharrock’s path into the world of professional sports started soon after he graduated from Galion High School in 1985. He enrolled at The Ohio State University where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in journalism and then his Master’s in sport management.
Sharrock knew he wanted to work with a professional sports team – it did not matter in which sport that would be – since his junior year of college, but he also wanted to work in public relations.
Sharrock took a job with the Dallas Freeze, a team in the newly formed Central Hockey League, right after grad school. He spent one year there before making the jump to the National Hockey League with the relocation of the Minnesota North Stars to Dallas in 1993. Sharrock would spend the first year of the Dallas Stars’ existence there before becoming a part of the Houston Aeros organization in the International Hockey League.
In February of 2000, after spending five years with Houston, Sharrock took a position with the Columbus Blue Jackets, a team that would play its first game seven and a half months later.
“I was fortunate in my career. The teams that I worked with prior were also new teams in new markets, but to be able to do it in Columbus was really a unique and special experience,” Sharrock said.
He started as Director of Communications where he oversaw media relations, publications, and the team’s website. The job evolved over the years, Sharrock explained, as he became involved with community relations activities and started up the team’s social media presence.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that Sharrock shifted from the digital media side to the team services department. As Vice President of Communications and Team Services, Sharrock now works closely with the hockey operations department. He helps coordinate team travel – hotels, buses, flights – and works with the players and coaches when they first come into the market, putting them in contact with realtors, banks, insurance companies, and anything else that helps them and their families relocate to Columbus.
Working that closely with the players and coaches has been great, Sharrock said. He recently talked with students from Otterbein University during a game and was asked if he always wanted to work in hockey. He told them he was lucky to have stumbled into the sport.
“I originally wanted to work in the NFL. That was kind of my goal – to be the PR director of the Dallas Cowboys,” Sharrock said. “But, the thing I’ve found in hockey is you just can’t beat the people – players, coaches, management. It’s a tremendous group of people.
“Hockey players are known to be the most down to earth of all professional athletes and it’s really true,” Sharrock added. “They’re great people to work with and I feel really fortunate in that regard.”
Sharrock recognized that hockey is still growing in Columbus and across the nation, especially now with the expansion of the Las Vegas Golden Knights into the NHL, but he believed it had the most room for growth among all professional sports.
“Simply because it’s not something that everybody does,” he explained. “There are a lot of people who have never been to a hockey game.”
That’s where being in a non-traditional hockey market can come into play, Sharrock said. Once you get that person to a live game, the perception of the sport changes.
“For every 100 people that I’ve talked to that said ‘I’ve never been to a hockey game before and I went to my first one,’ 99 percent say they love it,” Sharrock said. “It’s the one game that’s better in person than when you can watch it on TV.”
He added that the game of hockey was a fairly easily one to understand compared to football. For the person who may want to catch a game sometime, Sharrock suggested focusing on three main rules: offside, icing, and an offside pass.
“To really appreciate the excitement of the game, there’s nothing like being in the arena. There’s no sport that’s better or more exciting in person than hockey. We’re still even now – 16, 17 years in with the Blue Jackets – we’re still trying to reach those folks that haven’t experienced it.
“The speed, the excitement, the scoring, the hitting. There’s so much that’s appealing about the game,” Sharrock added. “It’s really satisfying to be a part of helping people discover the sport and become fans.”
Sharrock has faced the challenges of getting a team up and running in non-traditional hockey markets like Columbus and Dallas.
“It’s challenging, no question,” Sharrock said. “But it’s also rewarding when you see that. When you see the growth of our sport in central Ohio since the Blue Jackets have been here is phenomenal.”
When Sharrock left Columbus in 1992, there were only two hockey rinks in the capital city: The Ohio State University rink and the Columbus Chill rink at the fairgrounds. Now, the city hosts roughly a dozen rinks with more needed as the sport grows.
“That’s really rewarding to see that growth,” Sharrock said.
From his beginnings in Galion to his career with a professional sports team, Sharrock is doing exactly what he loves.
“The biggest thing I tell (college and high school students) is what you need to do is find what you’re passionate about,” Sharrock said.
He had an interest in journalism, but he never wanted to be a reporter – Sharrock wanted to be on the other side of things, working with the team and focusing on the positives of an organization.
“I liked to write and I liked the craft of communications, the skill set that’s involved,” he explained. “I kind of view myself as a communications marketing professional – it just so happens I work in hockey. I enjoy what I do and it doesn’t matter if I was working in hockey, for an agency or for a corporation . . . at the root of it that’s what I enjoy doing.
“If you find something that you really enjoy, that’s the most critical component,” Sharrock summed up. “You have to enjoy what it is that you’re tasked with doing every day and be committed to that.”