Former Terps SID started his craft early
Southern-Anne Arundel grad was active in Terrapin Club
Jack Zane was working in the sports information field long before he even knew it was a profession.
As a youngster growing up in southern Anne Arundel County, Zane would attend whatever local sporting events he could then send reports about themto The Capital.
Many of those writeups — about everything from summer amateur baseball to high school basketball — appeared in the newspaper.
“My mom Ellen worked in Annapolis and I always tried to hitch a ride to the nearest game,” Zane recalled. “I loved watching the games and I always liked writing about what I saw. I thought other people would, too. So I Jack Zane sent the stories to the paper.
“For years, The Capital ran almost everything I wrote. I guess I was their first freelancer,” Zane added.
Zane, who grew up in Harwood, died on Tuesday morning at the age of 87. He was inducted into the University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame in1986 and was enshrined in the Anne Arundel County Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.
His desire to write about sports and let others know what happened would turn into a career for Zane, a Southern-Anne Arundel graduate.
Zane served as sports information director for Maryland from 1969 to 1988 and earned a national reputation as one of the most respected members of the business.
While attending Southern in the late 1940s, Zane was an athlete himself — playing soccer and baseball. “I had to play. We only had 47 kids in our class and most of them were girls,” Zane recalled in an article about his career that appeared in the The Sunday Capital in January, 2004.
Zane enlisted in the Navy out of high school then enrolled at Maryland in 1953, using the GI Bill to pay the tuition. Zane had served as a communications specialist during his four years in the Navy and decided to pursue a journalism degree in College Park. Zane covered Maryland athletics for the campus newspaper and his work caught the attention of Joe Blair, the other legendary sports information director in school history.
While still an undergraduate, Zane worked for Blair in the Maryland Sports Information department and was enthralled when some of his stories made print in The Washington Post and The Sun.
Zane simultaneously wrote for The Diamondback and was named the first executive sports editor of the student newspaper. Following graduation, Zane was offered jobs with the Associated Press and several local newspapers, but elected to become full-time with Maryland sports information.
Zane left to serve as sports information Saturday, noon TV: BTN Radio: 105.7 FM Line: Maryland by 21⁄ director at George Washington for six years. He returned to Maryland sports information in the director’s role after Blair left to work as a publicist for the Washington Redskins. Those men reunited when Blair came back to Maryland. The press box at Maryland Stadium was named the Blair– Zane Media Work Area in 1991.
In addition, the office of media relations department head at thee XFINITYCenter is named in honor of Zane.
Zane was a 1986 inductee of the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame, for which he served as president in 1985 and 1986. He was awarded lifetime achievement awards by both CoSIDA (2000) and the Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame (2015).
Zane served as ticket manager for the Maryland athletic department for a decade.
Zane, who was an active member of the Terrapin Club along with his wife Judy for 47 years, also served as project manager for the Terrapin Room display that was part of the former Maryland Sports Museum at Camden Station.