MY STORY

Two years in, I've done a little bit of everything inside Xavier Athletics, starting on the marketing and fan engagement side, which is a nice way of saying I've built TikTok strategy for four different sports, run the intern Instagram account, helped run Media Day by directing athletes and capturing behind-the-scenes content, and, yes, spent select gamedays inside a full mascot costume as The Blob. (If you've ever wondered what fan engagement looks like from inside a giant foam head, ask me sometime)

Then I moved into the communications side of the department, where the job got a lot more deadline-driven. I've laid out game-day placards I made in InDesign a few days earlier that had to look right or the whole press box would notice, tracked live stats through every media timeout of a basketball game, and proofread and fact-checked my way through an entire basketball media guide. None of it is glamorous every single day, but all of it is where I learned to work under real pressure: a stat that has to be right before the next timeout ends or a media guide bio that has to be accurate before it goes to print. That kind of precision doesn't feel like the fun part of communications, but it's exactly what makes people trust you with the fun part later.

Twice now, I've spent a week inside the LPGA's PR and media operation when the tour came through Cincinnati. Both weeks were a crash course in what high-level sports media actually looks like: credentialing photographers, running mic checks during player Q&As, sitting in on the champion's post-tournament press session.

The part I'm proudest of, though, is the writing. I got to research, report, and publish two original articles for the LPGA: one spotlighting Xavier alumnae competing in the tournament, one on youth engagement initiatives on the course. Both came from actual interviews I ran myself. Getting a byline on something real, for an organization that big, is still one of my favorite lines on my resume.

I've also worked media operations for U.S. Soccer (both a men's and women's match) and spent a weekend on the ground when the Savannah Bananas rolled through town; proof that I'll show up for baseball with a giant banana costume just as readily as I'll show up for a press conference in a blazer.

Here's the honest version: I love sports broadly, and I love marketing broadly;  branding, social, digital, all of it genuinely interests me, and I'm not boxing myself into one lane before I've even graduated.

But if you ask what I actually want? It's motorsports. IndyCar and F1, specifically. I grew up watching races with my dad, and what started as background noise on Sunday afternoons turned into something I got seriously into during high school. I have strong opinions about strategy calls, driver rivalries, and who deserved that podium and who didn't ... I'll die on a few of those hills. I'm also the person listening to Off Track with Hinch and Rossi to get even more into the weeds of the sport. There's no fanbase in sports that lives and dies by storytelling quite like motorsports does, and that's exactly the kind of marketing I want to be building.

I'm a senior graduating this year, actively looking for my first role out of school, and I'd love for it to be with a team, league, or agency that wants someone who already knows how to run a live event, write a real article on deadline, and build content people actually stop scrolling for. Sports is where I want to stay. Motorsports is the dream. Everything in between is fair game.