Ithaca College is home to award-winning athletics with a large, devoted fan base and to the award-winning Park School of Communications. It’s a combination that allows students to create professional level content for the athletics departments that is shared across social media to alert fans of games, scores and awards the teams receive. These graphics and videos are shared by thousands, but the creators often go unnoticed.
Rachel Valentine, a senior Sports Media major is one of the student workers for the Bomber Sports Creative Media Team. She has been involved with the team for two semesters.
“It’s really fun it’s a great way for me to meet all the different teams across the entire campus, I learn a lot about the different sports, and I get to work creatively with captions and pictures, and I get to put it all together.”
The team is managed by junior, Peter Raider, who had the idea for a student-run creative team for different teams’ social media pages. Before Raider stepped up the teams’ social media pages were being run by coaches or team members who did not have experience in social media.
“I think we’ve created pages for sports teams that really didn’t have social media prior, and we’ve created a big presence for a lot of teams that maybe aren’t mainstream sports like you would traditionally think of,” said Valentine.
The team is responsible for creative graphics and running social media accounts for Bomber Sports
Not only does the content help the school’s athletic department interact with fans, but it also helps students like Valentine prepare for their future careers.
“I do want to work in social media and creative content and I’m hoping to get a job hopefully working for a sports team after school, so this definitely helps,” Valentine said.
The videos and graphics are shared through social media outlets such as Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok and is not only appreciated by fans of the sports but appreciated by the athletes as well.
“It’s really cool. If anybody that tells you that they aren’t looking at that stuff are lying because we all watch it,” said Ithaca College Quarter Back AJ Wingfield. “I watched the one that came out the day like four times in a row, even from Division one schools you don’t see this type of content. We love it we really do eat it up.”
The media team has also gained appreciation from the Park School. Associate dean of the school Bryan M. Roberts tweeted,
“The media content produced by Athletic Communications with @ICParkSchool student @PeterRaider2 and his crew is so damn good, you almost take it for granted. It’s not equipment, it’s not technology, it’s not location—it is about work ethic and a desire to get better each day.”
All the appreciation the teams gets makes them feel recognized and want to go on to create more amazing content for the athletic department.
“It’s really rewarding, people don’t recognize how much goes into the behind the scenes of the social media and creative content but when seeing people really enjoy it, sharing it and liking it you feel really good about what you put together,” said Valentine.
