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Pictured above: Beth Waguespack (top left), Colbie Balsamo (second from left), Angel Suarez (bottom left), Hannah Hatton (top middle), Kiersten Hart (far right), Natalie Wright (bottom right).
Q&A with Dennis Driscoll, Stephen F. Austin University Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications as told to Barb Kowal, College Sports Communicators Director of Professional Development and External Affairs.
New face of the workplace: Female-led SFA social team
by Barb Kowal – College Sports Communicators, Director of Professional Development & External Affairs
When you attend a Stephen F. Austin athletic event, you’ll see them in force around the playing fields, courts and athletic facilities.
It’s the SFA social and digital communications team, 18 women strong. They are full-time professionals, graduate assistants and student assistants, all involved in coordinating and producing social and digital content for the 18 Lumberjacks athletics programs.
Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications Dennis Driscoll, the leader of the external operations and strategic communications department at this small D1 institution, is quite proud of the staff that’s been built. Competing in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), SFA is located in the rural small-town of Nacogdoches, Texas, two hours north of Houston and two hours west of Shreveport, Louisiana.
In addition to the 18 females involved in social and digital content, the SFA strategic communications department also employs five others, including Driscoll. Twenty-three strong.
Within the social media team, there are students who lead their peers as student director of videography (Kiersten Hart) and student director of photography (Hannah Hatton) and social media (Natalie Wright).
Direct supervision for the social and digital content is coordinated by new Director of Social and Digital Content Hunter Overholt, who just arrived from Division III East Texas Baptist University. Overholt fully understands the benefits of building a social and digital student staff as he was a graduate assistant at ETBU and helped the school become a leader in the D3 ranks for social and digital content, broadcasting and livestreaming.
Driscoll talked about how this impressive staff was built.
“This past summer, we sent messages on our SFA social media outlets that we were looking for student interns to work in our office,” said Driscoll. “We had a solid group of four or five returning, but our student intern roster has ended up growing to almost 20 individuals. After a candidate would reach out, we interviewed them and tried match them with an area of strength.”
Driscoll is quick to acknowledge that the social/digital team — full of paid positions — would not exist if it weren’t for the support of the SFA administration.
“I need to point out that these are paid positions, and I’m extremely grateful that our athletic director, Ryan Ivey, heavily supports our students and our office,” noted Driscoll. “The amount of talent among our student body is incredible, and because of the support we receive, we are so fortunate to have a lot of that talent working as part of our digital and social communications team.”
The female-powered staff was, in many ways, entirely unintentional, Driscoll said.
“When the positions opened up, we were not intentionally seeking an all-female leadership team. We simply wanted the most qualified and competent candidates available, and you see who emerged,” Discroll noted.
“By casting a wide-net in the employment process with an appeal to all across campus, the current staff was formulated. I think that’s the advice I would give others — cast as wide a net as you can for your staff. That will give you diversity and with diversity comes new ideas and approaches. Because we could build a big staff and have great direction in our social and digital content because of it, our coaches and student-athletes greatly appreciate the quality coverage and innovative content.”
Creating opportunities. That’s what SFA has done in their social and digital communications space.
The SFA social and digital media successes are a testament to those in athletic department and sports communications leadership or those in positions of influence, who create roles for young female professionals and students. Those like AD Ivey with his support and financial resources, and Driscoll, by recruiting and teaching them, are showing that they are champions of this young talent pool. In turn, the young creatives are empowered to develop and produce quality content. It’s a win-win.
Below is a more detailed Q&A with Driscoll about his social and digital media team.
Tell us a little about your staff leaders and the skills and talents they bring to SFA.
Driscoll: Each of our full-time and student staffers are making great contributions, and I’d like to highlight several of them. They all come from different backgrounds and majors, and those varied experiences really are beneficial for our efforts. Having students step up and manage in photography and videography gives them to chance to become leaders at a young age.
Amanda Paver, Assistant Director for Strategic Communications: Amanda is more of a traditional athletic communicator and does a great job in her role. She is the primary contact for volleyball, women’s soccer, women’s basketball, baseball and track and field. And, in those roles, she’s taken the time to develop her photography and video skills. By taking the time to expand her skill set, she now takes and contributes quality photos and video.
Sarah Williams, Director of Creative Video: Sarah is our full-time video coordinator and joined us from the University of South Florida. She joined us in September after our first football game. At USF, she was a creative video student Intern for the branding and content creation department under the direction of (Associate AD for Brand and Digital Strategy) Chip Fontanazza for three years. With her tremendous experience, she’s come in and provided immediate leadership in the videographer role.
Kiersten “KK” Hart, Student Director of Videography: KK is a very, very talented videographer in her third year as a student assistant. She leads all of our student videographers. She’ll be leaving us in December after she graduates from SFA’s Micky Elliot College of Fine Arts with a degree in filmmaking. She already has a graduate assistant position secured at another NCAA Division I program, Boise State. She’s done great work for SFA and I’m really excited to see her grow in her new role once she graduates. Fun fact: Since 2020, KK’s video work has received over 400,000 views through her SFA athletics creative media content.
Hannah Hatton, Student Director of Photography: Hannah is our lead student photographer. She is a graphic design and photography student in the Fine Arts department and started off as a photographer who had not done any sports photography. Now, the majority of the photos that we use — she took them. Through her great work and attention to detail, Hannah has gained the trust of the coaching staffs and travels to away games.
Natalie Wright, Assistant Student Director of Social Media: Natalie is a jack-of-all-trades, but really shines in running the platforms. She is the student social media contact for men’s basketball and baseball. She is in her third year as assistant social media student director, keeps up with current trends and is a leader of the student team. Since last fall, her work has amassed over 185,000 views across our multiple social platforms.
Genesis Baze, student assistant: Genesis loves working on behalf of our student-athletes. She also manages the social media for the cheerleading and dance teams and their social media presence has taken off. She is an education major and plans to be a teacher, but if she wanted to make a career in social media, she could easily pivot!
Angel Suarez, student assistant: Angel is a very passionate young woman. When interviewing with us, she felt that the cross country and track and field student-athletes didn’t receive enough promotion. She now oversees that social media content for both programs and is doing a fantastic job. I follow SkullSparks and look at their rankings, and I haven’t yet seen anything for cross country, but it would not surprise me if we were ranked in the Top 50, if not higher.
Beth Waguespack, student assistant: Beth is one of our veteran students and she has learned videography and does a lot of our in-game clipping on Twitter. She’s a rockstar and has a great attitude – an important trait for sure!
What set of skills do you believe are required to become a social media manager?
Driscoll: It’s not necessary a skill, but your experience in social counts. If you use social media on a personal level, it provides a solid foundation.
Who creates the SFA content? Does your social media team run the team accounts? And if so, how do they interact with coaches and share ideas? How do you work with coaches and student-athletes to ensure quality content and on-brand messaging?
Driscoll: It’s a team effort in content creation. We utilize graphic design templates that allow us to stay on brand. Each of our teams has a social media student that is assigned to that team, and they communicate constantly with the coaches. We talk with the coaches and see what their vision is for their program, and prioritize the work we’ll be doing for them. From there, we take that vision and mold it with the SFA brand guidelines that are in place.
What are some “early wins” for your social staff? Any great engagement for a graphic, a video, an interview?
Driscoll: In July, our head football coach Colby Carthel was a guest on the Paul Finebaum Show. It’s not every day that an FCS coach is able to be interviewed on a national outlet. Our social media staff, which is led by (Director of Social Media & Digital) Hunter Overholt, was able to amplify the interview with a post-interview video and it took off with 200K impressions. We were all really excited about that.
As a department, how do you deal with negative comments or a brand reputation crisis? Do you, as the department head, coordinate all this, and if so, with which staffers?
Driscoll: That’s a great question. When we started cranking content out in August, we received a lot of positive interactions. We all monitor the accounts to make sure that we are proactive if anything like this emerges. There’s always that one person who will not like what’s said or will question you or call you out for some incorrect information, and they’ll use their Twitter fingers to tell you that. At first, it shook the team, because they weren’t used to that. Then, we told them that we will make mistakes because we are human, and we’ll work to correct the wrong information.
Even though TikTok has exploded and changed how we approach digital marketing in general, it's still not suitable for all businesses and schools. What are your thoughts on TikTok?
Driscoll: Honestly, we still don’t know what to think about TikTok. We have an athletics TikTok account and we could probably do more on it. For right now, I’d like to focus our energy on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as we have some great engagements on those platforms.
The Lumberjacks social media and digital team assembled in September for a group photo in the SFA’s basketball arena, the William R. Johnson Coliseum.
Women in the SFA social media team lineup
The Leadership Team
Kiersten Hart – Student Director of Videography
IG: @k.hartfilms Twitter: @khartfilmssport
Hannah Hatton – Student Director of Photography
IG: @hannahah6 Twitter: @HattonSports & @Hannahah6
Amanda Paver – Assistant Director for Strategic Communications
IG: @mandyjoyy Twitter: @mandyjoyy
Sarah Williams – Director of Creative Video
IG: @sarahcha0916 Twitter: @sarahcha0916
Natalie Wright – Assistant Student Director of Social Media
IG: @nataliexmichele Twitter: @nataliemichelew
Student Assistants
Colbie Balsamo
IG: @colbieb30 Twitter: @colbieb30
Genesis Baze
IG: @genesis.baze Twitter: @BazeGenesis
Zana Bluncson
IG: @pyo.ng Twitter: @pyongxoxo
Erika Cruz
IG: @erikacrruz and @erikacruzphoto
Daria Duke
IG: @dariaduke Twitter: @dariaduke
Tori Hardy
IG: @torithedash Twitter: @torithedash
Paris Harris
IG: @itsallinparis_18 Twitter: @therealparis23
Isabel Hughes
IG: @isabel_hughes Twitter: @isabelhughes64
Kayla Music
IG: @kaylamusiccc_ Twitter: @kmusic105
Emily Nava
IG: @emily__nava Twitter: @emily__nava
Lainey Sitter
IG: @lainey.ds Twitter: @LaineySitter
Anjelina Suarez
IG: @anjelrsuarez Twitter: @anjelinarsuarez
Beth Waguespack
IG: @bethwaguespack Twitter: @beth_waguespack
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