The 2025-26 academic year marks Steven Phelps' 19th year as Director of Athletics Communications at Buena Vista University. A 2005 graduate of BVU, Phelps is in charge of covering and promoting all 23 sports for the Beavers.
Since taking the position prior to the 2007-08 academic year, Phelps has been a vital part of increasing the promotion of the department, the student-athletes and the athletic teams. He's had the luxury of promoting 10 conference championship teams and 46 individual league titles, as well as dozens of all-conference and All-American student-athletes.
Phelps was behind the establishment of the athletic Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages and has expanded the use of live stats and introduced video web streaming to the BVU fan base. In the fall of 2013, he helped launch the department's first out-sourced athletic website before it launched its new-and-improved and current site in the summer of 2025.
Phelps and his workstudy staff serve as the real-time statistical scorers for football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, baseball and softball home games.
In addition, Phelps is responsible for communicating scores and releases to local, state and national media, while also nominating student-athletes for various awards at the conference, regional and national levels. He has also mentored several semester-long interns of the department during his tenure.
In the summer of 2024, the BVU Athletics Communications office was a nominee for the D3SIDA Regional Communicators of the Year.
Outside of his work at BVU, Phelps is a member of the Storm Lake Hy-Noon Kiwanis Club and served as club president in 2012-13 and again in 2021-22. He is a Storm Lake St. Mary's Booster Club member where he is set to begin his fourth term as president this fall. He's also been a certified high school baseball umpire for over 20 years and works numerous freshmen, JV/V games in the area each summer.
A 2005 Mass Communications major from BVU, Phelps went on to serve one year (2005-06) as an assistant sports information director at (DII) University of West Alabama in Livingston, Ala. In 2006-07, he moved back to his home state and went on to serve as sports information director at Grinnell College for one year before returning to his alma mater.
While a student at BVU, Phelps was a student worker in the sports information office all four years and did a majority of the public address announcing for several of the sports on campus. He also wrote for the campus paper, The Tack, for two years, serving as an assistant sports editor as a senior, and also did play-by-play television announcing for multiple football games.
Phelps spent the majority of his grade school attending Orient-Macksburg High School before his family relocated to Holstein, Iowa, prior to his junior year and he went on to become a 2001 graduate of Galva-Holstein High School.
He and his wife, Joy, reside in Storm Lake and have three children: Ruby, along with boy/girl twins, Cael and Peyton, who all are in high school at Storm Lake St. Mary's Catholic School.
