Teamwork For the Win

As the end of regular minor league baseball season looms, Alexis Dill ’20 is buzzing about this year’s inductees into the Worcester Red Sox (WooSox) Hall of Fame, including renowned ballpark planner Janet Marie Smith. 

It’s not the only thing on the Avon, Ohio, native’s plate: As director of public relations and community relations for the team, Dill is busy writing press releases, drafting in-game scripts, planning ballpark entertainment, coordinating earned media, and executing pre-game ceremonies.

Luckily, Dill, who is in her fourth season with the WooSox, the AAA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, is a natural team player—a skill she developed in two distinctly different ways at Oberlin: as a four-year member and two-time captain of the Oberlin softball team and as an editor at The Oberlin Review.  

An aspiring journalist, Dill pursued a major in English and a minor in rhetoric and joined the student-led newspaper at the suggestion of her academic advisor, Emeritus Professor of English T.S. McMillin. She rose through the ranks at The Oberlin Review, eventually working as both a sports and news editor, and also contributed columns. Early in her tenure, she wrote about the bond she forged with her father, Brad Dill ’86 (himself a former captain of the Oberlin baseball team) due to their shared love of baseball. 

“Writing for The Oberlin Review was life-changing,” Dill says. Among other things, collaborating with a diverse group of peers who took pride in their words inspired her to dive further into the world of communications, earning internships with The Chronicle-Telegram, the Cape Cod Baseball League, and USA Baseball. 

Being named one of three softball team captains during her third year proved equally game-changing. “I'm not sure I would have had the knowledge or confidence to lead a team in my professional life without that experience,” says Dill, who represented Oberlin on a panel of eight NCAA Division III athletes at the 2019 College Sports Communicators Convention. 

Speaking in front of 300 collegiate athletic directors was scary, but Dill embraced the challenge. “Oberlin taught me that the best way to grow and to succeed is to step out of my comfort zone,” she says. 

Keen on maximizing her liberal arts degree, Dill also took courses in art history, religion, and neurology, all of which challenged her to become “more well-rounded,” think critically, and hold multiple perspectives at once. 

Her overall experience at Oberlin was just as rewarding. “Meeting people from across the country and around the world, with diverse perspectives and backgrounds, opened my mind to the opportunities surrounding me,” she says, noting she also felt more empowered to take on speaking engagements and public appearances she was offered.   

Being open to opportunity also came in handy after Dill enrolled in Emerson College’s master of arts in public relations program after graduation. Her very first professor was Dr. Charles Steinberg, the president of the Worcester Red Sox. At his invitation, she accepted a job as public relations coordinator upon completing the master’s program.

Today, Dill leads a team of three full-time and five part-time employees in the WooSox front office. In July 2025, following a screening of See Her, Be Her, a feature-length documentary about the role women and girls play in shaping the future of baseball, Dill sat on an all-star panel, fielding questions about how to increase participation.

“Women in leadership positions must pay it forward by modeling for those who follow in their footsteps that rising to the executive level in sports, and having a family if they so choose, is possible,” says Dill, pointing to her own role model, WooSox general manager/executive vice president Brooke Cooper, the first woman to lead a Red Sox franchise.

The fun of reporting to work in a ballpark aside, Dill says her proudest accomplishment remains graduating from Oberlin. “Oberlin’s small size allowed me to seize opportunities—from building close relationships with professors to becoming sports editor of the collegiate newspaper—that exposed me to incredible people and opened the world to me.”

Hannah Van Sickle is a former educator turned storyteller who has written for Parents, Business Insider, SheKnows, Refinery29, and Modern Loss. 

Learn more about Oberlin's Communication Studies major, which helps students develop the written, oral, and digital storytelling and communication skills to engage with all kinds of audiences effectively.