Wesley Mallette

Wesley Mallette was named Deputy Athletics Director/Chief Marketing Officer for Gamecock Athletics on July 30, 2025. Mallette came to South Carolina from the University of California, Riverside, where he has most recently been serving as the school’s athletics director.

Mallette has been part of the UC Riverside staff since 2018 and has served as the Highlanders athletics director since 2021. 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.

Highlighting his time as AD, 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

Prior to being named AD, Mallette held the role of Chief of Staff and Senior Associate AD for External Affairs for UCR Athletics, where he was responsible for managing and changing the brand’s narrative. He served as the primary liaison between the Athletics Director and all fundraising activities and revenue operations and supervised all Strategic Communications, Digital and Emerging Media, Marketing and External Relations, Community and Fan Engagement, Ticket Sales and Operations and Sponsorships. He also led Athletics through a comprehensive visual identification brand redesign.

Before joining UC Riverside, Mallette served as Associate AD for Strategic Communications with Cal Athletics (UC Berkeley) where he oversaw all internal and external strategic communications and brand marketing efforts while guiding Cal Athletics through multiple crises and issues. Following three successful years with the Golden Bears, he went on to serve as VP of Communications for Pac-12 Networks.

For more than two decades, Mallette has created and conducted media/brand development trainings entitled “Building & Protecting Your Brand in the Digital Age,” for thousands of high school, college, Olympic, and professional athletes across the country. Based on a custom curriculum he created, developed, and adapted accordingly, this specialized, interactive workshop is designed to successfully provide traditional and social media and brand development training for athletes at all levels.

Prior to his career in collegiate and professional athletics, Mallette spent more than a decade in senior communications and marketing roles with MTV Networks, L Brands Inc.’s Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, Black Entertainment Television, Inc. (BET), and an advertising agency.

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, a seasoned athletics professional with more than two decades of experience in intercollegiate athletics administration. He has a son, Houston, who is a graduate basketball student-athlete at Alabama following a stellar career at Pepperdine, where he was a three-time All-WCC selection and two-time team captain, and a daughter, Soledad, who is a sophomore basketball student-athlete at Corona Centennial High School in Southern California.