By Hallie Harvey
I am forever grateful to For the Love of the Game Lacrosse (FLG) for what its internship program has taught me and the experience I will now carry into the rest of my life.
The entire FLG staff and community is incredibly welcoming and helpful and made my time with them feel less like work. Although the fall internship was remote because of the pandemic, I still felt a part of a team, despite not being in the office. The FLG team members even went out of their way to schedule video interviews with people in the industry. These meetings were to help us network with people like Rob Hagedorn of CSM Sport and Entertainment.
Throughout the internship, I doubled as a social media and journalism intern. In terms of producing content, I worked to complete an average of three articles a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I would also have to make the corresponding graphics in Canva to accompany each article, and I was responsible for uploading them to the Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts by scheduling the posts through Hootsuite. Once the posts were on our feed, I used my access to the FLG and LILJ Instagram accounts to promote the posts on our stories and interact with our followers who commented on the posts I created.
These stories mainly consisted of FLG teams’ alumni features, spotlights on high school students who committed to college teams, and profiles of coaches. The process included researching each source and coming up with appropriate questions for a Q & A style interview. I would then reach out over text, email, a phone call or Instagram DM to interview an FLG alum, a current FLG player who committed to college and an FLG coach. Once I finished writing and editing the articles, I published them using WordPress. For one of my last alumni interviews, I conducted a Zoom call with Meghan Santina, an FLG alum who plays defense for Kean University. Since Meghan has such a lively personality, a video interview seemed to be a better option. So instead of writing a typical Q & A formatted story, I recorded the interview and uploaded it to the blog.
In about mid-October, I created and published FLG’s first weekly newsletter, the “FLG Reveal,” using InfusionSoft, a CRM software site. The newsletter comprised all of the articles and content that I created throughout the week. On Mondays, it went out to all of FLG’s subscribers.
Midway through my internship, Alexa Hirt, my supervisor and coordinator, asked if I could start writing a couple of articles a week for the Long Island Lacrosse Journal, which FLG runs. Of course, I said yes. From then on, I wrote additional articles for the journal, including spotlights of Long Island high school seniors who committed to play in college as well as features that highlighted long-standing rivalries between Long Island high schools.
Not only did I create written articles and social media content, but I also was able to work a couple of tournaments run by FLG and LILJ. Throughout the fall, both FLG and LILJ ran lacrosse tournaments for Long Island’s club teams. I worked the tournaments by taking photos and videos of the games, and also uploading live Instagram stories to FLG’s account.
From this experience I’ve learned how much I love the social media marketing aspect of the sports and entertainment industry. Throughout my college career, I had always planned on pursuing sports broadcasting, but after working with FLG I have reimagined a career in social media management and marketing for a sports team or league. This internship taught me how to excel using resources like Canva, Hootsuite, InfusionSoft and WordPress, but also taught me lifelong skills like time management, networking and web building.
The only thing I wish I had known at the start of working for FLG is how much I wouldn’t want to leave once it ended. I’ve been extremely fortunate to work for such a great company and with so many awesome people that make it hard to say goodbye. And I pretty much don’t have to. FLG has offered me a paid position during the winter to help run its indoor league.
I absolutely recommend FLG’s internship program. The most important note to carry with you is to always create work that you’re proud of. It’s crucial to create content and stories that you would feel comfortable showing to future employers. Hold on to the work you create in a digital portfolio. This is one aspect that I wish I had focused on more throughout college.
