Commonwealth Coast Conference Associate Commissioner Doug Chin: Finding His Home in Small College Athletics

June 22, 2021

Main photo, L-R: Commonwealth Coast Conference Commissioner Gregg Kaye, University of New England President Dr. James D. Herbert, and Chin

Coming from a family that played and was interested in sports, Doug Chin noted that his family did not find it strange that he became involved in athletics, only that he chose to do so as a career. He just completed his sixth year with the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) where he serves as the Associate Commissioner.

Growing up in Dedham, Massachusetts, Chin began playing soccer in the first grade and continued through high school. He competed in youth basketball through middle school, and baseball, and track and field in high school. “Sports has been part of my life forever and I took an opportunity to turn that into a career,” he remarked. “I kind of actively went away from fields that are stereotypically seen as the typical career paths for Asians and Asian-Americans. My parents have always been supportive, but they do question it sometimes.”

He went to Boston University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism, focusing on broadcast journalism. He did play-by-play for multiple sports, including women’s lacrosse, ice hockey, and soccer, and also got a chance to call some games for the highly visible men’s ice hockey program. When he was looking for jobs, he was contacted by Joe Walsh, commissioner of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC), who knew Chin’s uncle and had a volunteer internship opportunity open. “That took me on the trajectory of being a sports information director and working in college athletics,” he stated.

During his time as an intern from May 2012 to November 2013, he started the GNAC Twitter account, built up the conference Facebook presence, produced videos and multimedia projects, and used his play-by-play experience to call conference championship events. In March 2014, Chin began working full-time for the GNAC as part of the NCAA Division III Ethnic Minority and Women’s Internship.

In 2014, he took over as the sports information director at Pine Manor College, where he had previously served as head women’s soccer coach in the fall of 2013. Due to troubled finances, Pine Manor cut several positions in athletics, but Chin saw it as a blessing in disguise. “Networking came into play as Joe Walsh contacted me about an assistant commissioner position with the CCC that he thought I would be interested in,” he recalled. “I interviewed with Commissioner Gregg Kaye and have been here since. I think my past work with multimedia, video, social media, photo and video editing helped me get the position.”

Chin and Kaye celebrating the inaugural ice hockey season in the Commonwealth Coast Conference

Growing Up in Predominantly White Suburb

“I grew up in a suburban, middle-class neighborhood. In my high school graduating class, there were maybe two other Asians and not more than 5-10 Asian families in total in the whole school,” Chin noted. “It made me stand out.”

He acknowledges that he didn’t face a lot of discrimination in Dedham, which impacted his self-view. “I didn’t put a lot of weight on being Asian. Growing up not being around others who looked like me was normalized, whether that is good or bad,” he pointed out. “I was always aware that I was the only person who looks like me in many situations, but to me that’s just how it was. I was the Asian kid.”

He found a far more diverse group of friends during his college years in Boston. “I don’t think it was anything intentional, but we ended up with a pretty mixed group. There were just so many students there,” he recollected. “It was also a time when Brandon Yip (who went on to play with three National Hockey League teams) was at BU. The reality is fans tend to notice when there is an Asian athlete. Even someone like Paul Kariya, who was a half-Asian NHL player, stood out to me. When Jeremy Lin got to the NBA (National Basketball Association), his story blew up in the media.”

The Model Minority

“Talking about racial issues and being Asian puts me in a weird position sometimes, especially because I’ve personally lived a pretty privileged life. I don’t want to minimalize racism against Asians, but I feel like my experience doesn’t always compare to people who have felt overtly oppressed because of their race,” he described. “In general, the Asian experience and stereotypes in the U.S. are different than of someone who is Black or Latinx. Part of that goes back to the ‘model minority’ myth and the perceived success of Asians in the workplace, which is used to try and criticize other people of color,” he added. “The comparisons to other people of color can be used as a tool by those in power who want to maintain that current power structure by pitting minorities against each other.”

Chin believes that being the only Asian assistant commissioner in Division III and one of the very few people of color in conference offices has some benefits. “Sometimes not looking like everyone else works in my favor because I stand out to people, even if we have never had a conversation. It has created opportunities when people want to talk to me about my experience,” he reported. “At the same time, I wonder why there aren’t other people who look like me.

Chin at the New England Conference Rules Seminar in 2017

“I think sometimes Asians are given more ‘positive’ stereotypes than those who are darker skinned. That reinforces the racial dynamic,” Chin continued. “Just because you are Asian doesn’t mean you have an aptitude for certain things. There are so few Asians in top executive positions. The stereotype is that Asians will work hard, but they are not leaders. Instead, it is often just systemic and ingrained into us that we are workers.”

He finds that the stereotype of being successful sometimes comes within the Asian culture itself. “Instead of advancing and being in positions of power, many Asians are accepting of worker roles where they find financial success and prestige,” he commented. “That is so stressed that if a person doesn’t fit that model, regardless of what resources they have access to, they are looked down upon. These perceptions of success can lead to complicated issues with Asians being racist toward other ethnic groups.”

Chin at Commonwealth Coast Conference Day with Kaye and conference student-athletes

Despite the recent rise in violence against members of the AAPI (Asian-American and Pacific Islander) community, Chin has been encouraged by many people standing up for people who have been harmed and/or discriminated against. “It has been comforting that issues with people who look like me are not being ignored. It isn’t like racism against Asians hasn’t been happening all along, but it isn’t always in the forefront,” he expressed. “There is so much intersectionality when it comes to issues of prejudice and social justice. We understand that the prejudice is all one in the same and can’t be ignored, that in working toward equality for everyone means one group may need to be the focus at the time because of current circumstances.”

Hobbies and His Future

Chin parlayed his love of soccer into refereeing at an early age, starting to work youth games in the fifth grade. He has been a certified referee since 2002 and though he has not worked a game in a few years, he stays active with his certification. He fondly recalls his early days as a referee in Futsal, which is an indoor version of soccer that is played on hardwood floors and does not use boards or walls. “When I started refereeing in Futsal, there were not a lot of us doing it, so I got to ref in regional tournaments when I was 14 and by age 17, I was working a national tournament in California,” he remembered.

One of his favorite hobbies is playing the guitar, where playing covers of country music songs is his forte. “That fits in with me being Asian and not fitting in with stereotypes,” he joked. “My dad loves music and introduced me to a lot of genres from country, to classic Motown and Doo-Wop, to rock groups like Queen. I started playing instruments in middle school, including playing trumpet in the school band. One day I found my dad’s old guitar and started fiddling with that. Eventually, I started buying my own guitars and playing more.”

YouTube was invented in 2005 and was starting to take off during Chin’s years in college from 2006-10. “A lot of the early popular creators and musicians were Asians, which I found interesting because of the general lack of representation in the mainstream media. They put their material on YouTube and people enjoyed it. Music is just a nice escape to do something different and creative,” said Chin, who posts some of his cover songs on his own YouTube channel dougiejoe. “My brother bought me a keyboard for my birthday, so I am looking forward to learning that. With guitar, my dad taught me a few chords and I found a lot of resources on YouTube. I am very much a hobbyist and play basic chords. I know notes, but I don’t sight read.”

Chin noted that his father bought his guitar while serving in the U.S. Navy. “There is a common microaggression that Asians face where they are asked where they’re ‘really from.’ The country is very intentional about thanking its veterans. In addition to my father’s navy service, both my grandfathers are U.S. Army veterans, so I always found that interest. Am I not considered American?” he asked. “It didn’t bother me growing up, but as I have thought about it more, it is an ‘othering’ of my experience as an Asian-American.”

As is true with so many of his peers in conference offices, he finds it difficult to explain what he actually does for a living. “People really don’t understand our job. Sometimes people in athletics don’t even know what we do. When I say I work in college athletics, people ask me what school I work at. The way I try to describe it by saying think of the NFL versus the Patriots. We do media relations for the league,” he articulated. “It is particularly hard for people to grasp what it is like to work in a two- or three-person office. There are a lot of expectations from people, but in our case, there are only two of us. If I go on vacation, there is literally no one who can do my job unless we reach out to someone outside of our conference.”

Chin completing the Disney Marathon in 2020

He has also continued pursuing education throughout his career. In 2018, he earned his master’s degree in Sports Leadership and Coaching from Western New England, and then earned his MBA from WNEU in 2019. Chin is currently working on his doctorate in Education/Higher Education Administration at Northeastern University. “I told my parents I wanted a doctorate in education, and they asked if I was sure I didn’t want to look in health care,” he laughed. “Right now, I like working in athletics and higher education. Division III and small colleges in general has the ideal vision for what college athletics should be. It is an idealized vision of what it is supposed to be.”

His preliminary doctorate dissertation is investigating the financial struggles of small private colleges relying on tuition to stay afloat. “Small colleges help add diversity to the higher educational landscape, so it is important that these smaller private colleges that offer a different experience and more access than other schools continue to exist,” Chin asserted. “I am looking at education from that standpoint. My plan is to stay in athletics and small colleges in some way. That is the niche that I feel very comfortable in. The idea of college athletics being part of the college experience is important and is often overlooked by more noticeable power five Division I conferences, which is what most people perceive as college athletics.