Wesley Mallette, the Director of Athletics at UC Riverside since 2021, is leaving the Inland Empire for Columbia, South Carolina, where he will take over as the Deputy Athletics Director/Chief Marketing Officer for Gamecock Athletics at University of South Carolina, both schools announced Wednesday on their websites.
Mallette, who previously served as interim director and Chief of Staff and Senior Associate Athletics Director, External Relations at UCR before taking over as AD, helped guide UC Riverside athletics through one of the most challenging and defining periods in its history, the school posted on its website.
Mallette’s leadership was instrumental in preserving the university’s Division I program in 2021 and in building a foundation of excellence centered on student-athlete success, competitive growth, and campus alignment, per the UCR announcement.
“This has been the honor of a lifetime,” Mallette said on the UCR site. “UC Riverside is a special place, and I will always be proud of what we accomplished together. Our student-athletes, coaches, and staff showed what is possible when you lead with purpose, care deeply, and stay focused on doing things the right way.
“I am grateful to Chancellor Kim Wilcox, and our campus community for their trust and partnership. Under the leadership and guidance of Chancellor S. Jack Hu, UCR Athletics is poised for great things ahead and the program has an opportunity to soar with the continue to excel academically, athletically, and in the community.”
At South Carolina, Mallette will serve on the senior leadership team under Athletics Director Jeremiah Donati and bring his three decades of experience in all aspects of intercollegiate athletics, external relations, marketing, branding, content creation, communications and the new NIL space to Gamecock Athletics.
“On behalf of our entire athletics department we are thrilled to welcome Wes and his family to South Carolina,” said Donati in the release on the Gamecocks’ website. “We identified a tremendous pool of traditional and non-traditional candidates for this position and he quickly rose to the top of the list.
“Wes brings a wealth of energy and experience, having touched every aspect of an athletics program. Particularly, his experience in external relations from marketing, branding, content creation, communications and the NIL space will be critical as we continue to embrace a new landscape across college athletics.
“He will be a great addition to our leadership team, our athletics department, to our university and to the city of Columbia, and we look forward to the positive impact he will have with Gamecock student-athletes.”
Highlighting his time as AD at UCR from the webposts include:
- Mallette helped elevate the UCR Athletics brand by securing a new shoe and apparel deal with Nike/BSN SPORTS. During his tenure, UCR Athletics experienced its best fundraising year ever in 2024-25 and tallied four of its top five fundraising years in more than a decade. His leadership with the men’s basketball program earned him distinction as one of the nation’s top 100 most influential people in men’s college basketball by Silver Waves Media in both 2023 and 2024
- Under his leadership, UCR Athletics survived its biggest crisis in the school’s 25-year history at the Division I level, as the entire 17-sport department was saved from being eliminated during the COVID-19 pandemic in his first year at the helm. Since that time, Mallette witnessed several of the Highlander teams perform at historically high levels on both the fields of competition and in the classroom.
Mallette holds a B.A. in Communications from James Madison University, where he was a two-sport Division I student-athlete in football and track and field. He earned his M.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Mallette is married to the former Melody Stockwell. He has a son, Houston, who is a graduate student on the basketball team at Alabama, and a daughter, Soledad, who was scheduled to begin her sophomore year at Corona Centennial High School.
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