Student-run Chapman athletics pages create personal connection with athletes

Catcher Cooper Foard, a senior political science and public relations and advertising double major, and pitcher Grant Manning, a junior creative writing major, are the faces behind the social media account for Chapman’s baseball team. MADDIE MANTOOTH, Staff Photographer

Quality over quantity: this is the strategy social media accounts representing the various sports teams under Chapman Athletics have taken to build a supportive following from their family, friends and school community.

Many of these accounts are run by players themselves, with the goal of creating personalized content that viewers can relate to. This layer of relatability is what distinguishes the social presence of Chapman sports teams in a media landscape that typically narrows its coverage of college athletics to the Division 1 level.

The account @chapmanbaseball is run by two Chapman baseball players. Catcher Cooper Foard, a senior political science and public relations and advertising double major, had the page passed down to him from alumnus and former pitcher Riley Glenn, who graduated in 2021. Foard felt that it was a unique opportunity to run the page, since the job aligned with his major. 

Pitcher Grant Manning, a junior creative writing major, runs the page alongside Foard, though he entered the gig with some prior experience. Manning has posted actively on TikTok since 2018 and currently has over 307,400 followers.

“Over this past year, (Foard) and I formed a collaboration within our own Instagram where ( Foard does) most of the graphics, and I do a lot of the pictures and videos on our Instagram,” Manning said. “It makes a really good partnership.”

Since Foard and Manning have been running the page, Foard said he’s had two goals in mind this year: to expand the Chapman baseball team’s presence — not just at school but within Orange — and to start showcasing the distinctive personalities of the players.

“We’ve got some really funny personalities (on the team),” Foard said. “Our shortstop Drew Littwin is a comedian, so we did some mic’d up footage with him … We have a great team full of amazing personalities, and we just use that to our (benefit) and work with that in our advertising.”

One of these personalities is infielder Nick Kondo, a second-year graduate student concentrating in business administration, who was shown celebrating a home-run in a Feb. 18 video on the Chapman baseball Instagram page. The clip was picked up by Barstool’s TikTok page — which has a following of 15.9 million users — and topped 397,000 views as of March 5.

“(@chapmanbaseball) went viral a couple times,” Foard said. “We had one video go on SportsCenter a couple weeks ago; that was cool.”

Manning pointed out that another focal point of the baseball page is recruitment of potential talent to the baseball team.

“(We wanted to) be able to highlight some of the benefits of our program, so that way any future recruits who might be looking to apply to the university — or if they’re on a recruiter’s watch list — would be able to get a more in-depth look at our programs,” Manning said. “Hopefully, then (potential recruits) could be better informed about the decision of whether or not they want to come.”

Alex Vasquez, a sophomore film production major, runs @chapmanhoops Instagram and created the page when forward Anthony Smith, a senior strategic and corporate communications major, and guard Ben Grant, a senior communications major, reached out to Vasquez during an Intro to Entrepreneurship class last semester.

Though Vasquez runs his own Instagram and has previously submitted his own graphic designs, videos and other content to sports media pages, managing @chapmanhoops is his first experience running a page for an organization.

“Originally, I had said no (to running the account), because I was like, ‘I‘m too busy, I have a lot of projects going on (and) I don’t know if it’d really be worth it,’” Vasquez said. “And then I thought it over, and I was like, ‘No actually, that’d be really fun.’ I used to play basketball all through high school, and I missed being away from the personal side of the sport.”

It was perfect timing for Vasquez to start up the page; the basketball team made it all the way to the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship and even played a game in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Men's Basketball Tournament, opening up a lot of coverage for @chapmanhoops.

Vasquez got players to announce upcoming postseason games and even went as far as to feature Public Safety officers on Instagram stories to promote fan attendance and support at basketball games. 

“I knew that if I was going to run the page, I was going to treat this page like it was the Los Angeles Lakers’ page,” Vasquez said. “I was going to go 110% with video, graphics and content.”

Midfielder Avery High, a junior political science and peace studies double major, runs the women’s lacrosse page @chapmanuwlax. But running the account was a familiar responsibility, given that High has a background helping out with the social media presence for a nonprofit called Pledge to Humanity.

She told The Panther that she came into her current role last year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of competing, High opted to run the team’s Instagram page, which was handed down to her by Chapman ‘21 alumna and former defender Elizabeth Chadwick.  

Many posts on the women’s lacrosse page feature creatively written player bios, which High writes on her own with the help of surveys she sends out to fellow teammates.

“I send out a form to the whole team, just like fun stuff for like hometown, how long you’ve been playing lacrosse. But (also) fun facts, pre-game ritual, that kind of like team dynamic (aspect),” High said. “And writing the freshman bios and asking them and interacting with them more just because I didn’t know them as well definitely helped me get closer to them and gain more interpersonal relationships outside of just being teammates.”

High said she typically adds some humor to the player bios on Instagram and even incorporates inside jokes, which builds a community aspect not just for team’s supporters but for former and current players.

“A lot of the alumni from this past year and a couple of years ago are still really active on the page, and so it brings underclassmen, (upperclassmen), and past players together,” High said. “My friends from home seeing my bio, for example, would (get to) know more about me, and it just has more character to it than just a normal ‘name, grade major’ type of (post).”

At the end of the day, Foard, Manning, Vasquez, and High agree that putting Division III sports on the map in a media market saturated with Division I sports is important to the content they produce.

“(A major goal for @chapmansports is to) help people realize that DI isn’t the only level of college baseball, and (in) DIII, there’s a lot of entertainment to be found,” Foard said.

Similarly, High agreed that generating unique content for social media can be a significant tool for Division III sports to gain traction and interest.

“(Our Instagram) can be badass and have cool edits on our page, but to give it more character — like we’ve been doing with the bios — has been really fun, and I think other people have noticed that,” High said.