Don Weast

Don Weast

  • Title
    Associate Athletic Director, Media Relations
  • Email
    dweast@emporia.edu
  • Phone
    620-344-6190

Don Weast is in his 22nd year in charge of athletic media relations at Emporia State and 23rd year as a full-time employee for the Hornets.

Promoted to the title of Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations in 2003 and Associate Athletic Director in 2017, Weast oversees media relations, publications and Web site management for the 15 sport intercollegiate athletic program at ESU.

His office has won three Best in Nation awards from CoSIDA for publication excellence. He has promoted four student-athletes to national player of the year honors in their sport.  Hornet student-athletes have earned Academic All-American honors 33 times under his tenure, including two Academic All-Americans of the Year.

In his role at Emporia State Weast has handled the media relations duties for four NCAA Division II softball regionals, three baseball regionals, two women's tennis regionals, one volleyball regional, one women's soccer regional and the 2006 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field National Championships. He also assisted with three women's basketball regionals, one baseball regional, one softball regional and two outdoor track & field championships at Emporia State.   He served as the pre and post game press conference moderator at the 2015 and 2016 NCAA Division II Football Championship games at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City.

He developed Emporia State Athletic's social media presence and has grown it to one of the largest followings in the MIAA.  The Hornets are the only program in the conference with at least 10,000 Twitter followers, 9000 Facebook likes, 2500 Instagram followers and 500 YouTube subscribers.

He began his association with the Hornets as a student athletic trainer in 1986. Weast spent part of the 1989-90 season with the now defunct Topeka Sizzlers of the CBA as an athletic trainer.

He spent two seasons as a Rule 10 assistant football coach at Osage City Junior High in 1992-93.

A 1998 graduate of ESU, Weast was a sports supervisor at the Emporia Recreation Commission prior to returning to ESU as a student in the sports information office in 1997.


After a year of graduate work at Central Missouri, he returned to ESU in 1999 as the director of sports promotions.