The College Sports Communicators named former Central College Sports Information Director Larry Happel one of 10 recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award to be given at the organization’s convention in Orlando, Florida in June.

The CSC Lifetime Achievement Awards are presented to members for distinguished career service who have served at least 25 years in the profession and are retiring, have retired, or are leaving the athletic communications profession.

Happel served as athletics communications director at Central College from 1979-2024 before retiring and taking on part-time duties as athletics senior editor. A 1981 Central graduate, Larry handled multiple additional roles, including twice serving as the college’s communications director for a combined 15 years. In his 46th year of service, Happel surpassed Iowa State University Hall of Famer Harry Burrell as the longest-serving college or university sports information director in state history.

A Waverly, Iowa native, he was inducted into the College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame in 2010 and received the Warren Berg Award for outstanding achievement in the college division sports information field in 2006. Larry served a three-year term on the CSC board of directors and also spent six years on the Division III Sports Information Directors of America (D3SIDA) board, including a two-year term as president. He was the first to serve as the organization’s vice president. Happel has been a member of the CSC Special Awards Committee since 1999.

He spent three years on CSC’s College Division Management Advisory Committee, and served on the organization’s Writing Contest Committee, former Allied Organizations Committee, and Membership Services Committee. Larry was on the Hewlett-Packard Division III Football All-America Team Selection Committee from 1991-2000, the Host Communications-NCAA Championships Program Advisory Committee from 2005-09 and has served on the D3hoops.com Women’s Basketball Ranking Committee since 2006.

Happel received 22 CSC national publications awards and 18 CSC writing awards, as well as two writing awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). His feature on former homeless youth Jaime Miranda, a Central wrestler, was named the National Story of the Year in the 2017 CSC Fred Stabley Sr. Writing Contest.

Following the expansion of P.H. Kuyper Gymnasium, Central’s national champions trophy case was named in Larry’s honor in 2019. He received the college’s Presidential Service Standard Award for Energy in 2009.

While on a sabbatical from Central in 2003-04, Happel spent 10 months as a visiting assistant in the men’s athletics media relations office at the University of Tennessee. He’s also served on the media relations staff for multiple NCAA Division I and Division III Championship events as well as for Southeastern Conference and Missouri Valley Conference championships.

Happel serves on the board for the Pella CROP Walk for world hunger and spent five years as board chair. Larry was also a three-year board member for Habitat for Humanity of Marion County and was the adviser for Habitat’s campus chapter at Central for 14 years. Since 1981, he’s been a member of Pella’s Second Reformed Church, where he served two three-year terms as Deacon and another as Elder, including a year as the congregation’s First Vice President of the Consistory.