SAU student and sports social media manager Everett Parker’s work often grants him access to some of sports’ biggest superstars. Photo Courtesy of Everett Parker.
St. Ambrose’s Football program has a team on the sidelines making sure they’re hitting social media numbers other schools would envy. Meet Katie Le, a senior business management and marketing major, who works alongside Everett Parker, a first-year student majoring in business marketing and digital media production.
In three months, Le and Parker doubled the follower count, gained two million views, and reached over three million accounts. They take pride in using their skills from past internships to better football’s social media page.
Le says, “We wanted to build a name and brand for SAU, and we wanted people to invest in our players, I wanted them to feel like they knew our players.”
Le and Parker say they plan to continue to grow the branding of the Ambrose football team and produce high quality videos. Le continues to say that no other team in our conference is branding their name like Ambrose and takes pride in outreaching and displaying the athlete’s skill.
Gaining Experience Within Your Campus Community:
When Katie was a first-year student; she got her first internship with the men’s soccer team as a social media manager. She learned to love photography and feature her photos on social media.
“I was always set on my career goals with real estate and construction; so, I never dabbled in photography. I just thought it was an interesting hobby, and I wanted to be more involved in school.”
Katie says she took the opportunity to meet new people and experience an interesting hobby, but she did not realize she would love it this much. Then Le applied for the SAU football team for the social media role. She attended games and some practices with a camera in her hand, taking pictures of the players. Sophomore year, Le wanted to be more involved with athletics.
“I think the best way to get internships is to basically be on alert and I scoured Handshake all the time to find opportunities.”
After applying to other programs, Le was working with the SAU athletic department and photographed 31 athletic programs. Every home game, Katie was on the sideline photographing the men’s and women’s teams. She also applied to outside internships; Per Mar security services had an opening as a marketing intern.
“I did the marketing internship, and it made me fall in love with marketing. That is when I added on my marketing major and that made me fall more in love with content creation.”
For Katies senior year, she took the opportunity to manage social media for the SAU football team. She also works in the communications and marketing department as a social media intern.
She believes the whole idea of internships is to find out what you enjoy doing and learning new things. She advises Ambrose students to apply for everything and be open to a lot of new things.
“Just get yourself out there, meeting new people, and be open to exploring new things because you never know what skills you would enjoy.”
Expanding Experience Beyond Campus Walls:
Before Everett stepped on campus, he was working with the St. Ambrose football team shooting videos and decided to come study here.
Parker connected with people outside of St. Ambrose through Instagram, LinkedIn, and tournaments. He talked to creatives, directors, and people at Nike to be able to work at EYBL.
“Just networking with other people and coming up with content strageies and learning different ways to shoot and being more efficient with the camera.”
He had an internship with Tyler Hero’s AU team; he says, “I worked with them, traveled with them, shot for them, and made content for their media pages.”
After that internship Parker worked with Puma and Pro 16, he was able to understand new videography techniques, talk to athletes, and communicate with people. Parker wants students to know that you need to be at the right place, right time, and it was a learning experience for him.
He completed an internship with the City of Palms Fort Myers, Florida. He got it through connections from prior internships. “They were like if you needed an internship for school. We will pay for your flight, travel, and other expenses. It was an awesome experience and 7 days of shooting basketball.”
Parker shot high-level basketball, high-level athletes, and there were a lot of celebrities who attended the events. He met NBA legends, college basketball players, and WNBA athletes through his internships. He has to keep conservation professional and casual, which helps him prepare for when he meets other famous people.
Parker would recommend Ambrose students to go out, get out there, and you might have to work for free, but it is a way to expand your learning opportunities.
“If you really want something, and you work hard and want it badly, then you will get it. You just have to put in the effort, time, and energy into it.”
