NC State’s Elissa Cunane wins 2021 Tudor Award for media cooperation
Elissa Cunane’s junior season didn’t end the way she or N.C. State wanted it to, and she was still processing the Sweet 16 loss to Indiana when Wolfpack sports information director Matti Smith came to get her in the locker room for her postgame Zoom call with the media.
“Matti came in, ‘Media!’ and I was like, “What?’” Cunane said. “But at the same time I was honored they chose me to talk to them. Somebody’s got to. I felt like I was going to be able to say what I wanted to say to them and get our point across of how we felt. As much as I talk to people, I just love it so much it never gets tiring.”
It’s the kind of affability that earned the Wolfpack star from Summerfield the nickname “Big Smile” and made Cunane the first women’s basketball player to win the Caulton Tudor Award, which recognizes the Triangle basketball player who is most cooperative with the media in honor of the late News & Observer, Raleigh Times and WRAL sports columnist.
Cunane joins Ralston Turner (2015) and Torin Dorn (2019) as Wolfpack winners of the award, which is presented by Tobacco Road Sports Cafe.
While the Tudor Award had so far only gone to men’s players because they typically bear the heaviest media burdens, the N.C. State women got as much media attention this season as any team in the Triangle, and Cunane was often the focal point. She was clearly the most worthy selection this year, a deserving winner under difficult circumstances not only for her pre-pandemic track record but her virtual affability and engagement during this tumultuous season.
For Cunane, it started in high school at Northern Guilford, when she was one of the top recruits in the country. As the Wolfpack’s profile has grown with back-to-back ACC titles, so have her media responsibilities.
“I just kind of got good at it, and now having the personality to talk to people, I really just enjoy meeting new people and talking to announcers that know like everybody in the world and they take the time to talk to me,” Cunane said. “So yeah, I definitely embrace it. I think it’s pretty cool just to talk to people and be able to share my story and be able to give some insight on the team.”
Cunane stood out in part because her personality came through so strongly over Zoom that it transcended the barriers placed between players and the media by the pandemic. That made it a terrible year for the kind of interaction this award is intended to recognize, without the kind of offhand conversations that can happen after an in-person interview, or in an open locker room at the ACC or NCAA tournament, or any of the other times players and writers and television people might bump into each other.
That’s a physical impossibility on a Zoom call with five or 15 or 50 blank faces on screens. There’s no lingering behind to ask a follow-up, no genuine interaction. Consumers may or may not have noticed this, but professionals certainly have: the quality of coverage of the ACC and NCAA tournaments hasn’t been anywhere as good this year as it usually is.
A single player on a short Zoom is no substitute for the open locker rooms that have facilitated so many great stories in the past about everyone from stars to role players to walk-ons to graduate assistants. So many of those stories are just evaporating into the void this year, untold.
Given all that, Cunane’s ability to make impersonal Zoom calls feel like in-person conversations made her an obvious choice for the Tudor Award. She has another year left at N.C. State; here’s to resuming the status quo ante next fall. She’s ready for it.
“There’s definitely a lot more attention, more people that want to do interviews,” Cunane said. “I think it’s cool people want to tell the women’s basketball story. Anytime people want to interview me, I’m here for it, because I love putting women’s basketball on that platform.”
Caulton Tudor Award winners
2015 Ralston Turner, NC State
2016 Marcus Paige, UNC
2017 Matt Jones, Duke
2018 Theo Pinson, UNC
2019 Torin Dorn, NC State
2020 Jack White, Duke
2021 Elissa Cunane, NC State
