#Lacrosse Is Trending: Social Media Influence on the Sport / Corey McLaughlin

#Lacrosse Is Trending: Social Media Influence on the Sport

Published on October 1, 2014

On a drizzly Thursday evening in late May in Washington, D.C., two men stood side-by-side inside the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, relatively invisible to the cocktail party crowd around them at a pre-Tewaaraton Award ceremony. But if those lacrosse enthusiasts, friends and family just a shoulder-length away knew what social media account access was in a pair of pants pockets nearby, it’s easy to imagine people would have lined up for any number of requests. Just like the kids and fans asking for autographs with the five men’s and five women’s Tewaaraton finalists.

Albany assistant coach Eric Wolf’s smartphone is notified of any mention of the Great Danes men’s lacrosse team on Twitter. And with Lyle and Miles Thompson both finalists for college lacrosse’s highest individual honor, he said “it’s getting crazy,” as anticipation built for the ceremony that eventually crowned the first-ever co-Tewaaraton winners in the form of the two brothers.

Next to Wolf stood Bill O’Brien, the Thompsons’ older cousin, curator of the Thompson Bros Lacrosse brand, and the same guy you’ll hear at games as the “human goal horn.” As someone who had a capable phone and knowledge to use the necessary Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts involved, he took up the task before last season of streamlining all that was out there about college lacrosse’s most exiting family, putting the information in one place and giving fans an inside, raw look at their lives. Like the first time Lyle and Miles tried crab cakes in the days before the Tewaaraton ceremony.

“Why not give people a way to peek into the lives with these guys?” O’Brien said. “They are normal people. They’re not superheroes, although some people still idolize them.”

In the atrium of the museum, under a 120-foot high domed roof, was one of those moments when a trending topic in the stratosphere of the Internet had a real human impact — and was in some cases driven — by someone you wouldn’t think of, or even know of, on the ground.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming, said Wolf, entering his fourth year on the Albany staff, every time someone pings @UAlbanyLacrosse on Twitter or leaves a message on the Danes’ Facebook page. In addition to coaching the Danes’ offense, Wolf runs the team’s social media accounts, a common job responsibility for a member of a lacrosse coaching staff, according to a Lacrosse Magazine survey of nearly 50 Division I men’s and women’s programs.

Given the non-revenue status of the sport at the college level and the fact that many athletic department sports information officers are spread thin with time and resources, many schools put at least part, if not all, of their social media responsibilities in the hands, phones and computers of coaching staff, mainly assistants, directors of operations or team managers.

Even some head coaches, like Loyola’s Charley Toomey and Lehigh’s Kevin Cassese, regularly access their own team accounts and can see the notifications coming in. In the moments leading up to the world championship gold medal game this July, Team USA head coach Richie Meade’s phone showed messages sent to his Twitter account. The days of “not reading the newspaper clippings,” are as long gone as that Facebook post you saw two days ago.

“Is my phone on vibrate more than having the sounds on in-season?” Wolf said, “Definitely.”

Does tweeting or planning ahead what to post take away from other responsibilities? Sure. Free time? Yep. But it can be better this way, too. Coaches and staff are always around the team and can provide instant behind-the-scenes access about their program and players, to promote the team and connect it with fans, recruits and alumni as they wish. It can be spur of the moment. How else can you get pictures of the Loyola team in the film room during a mid-day session? Or the Penn State squad at an early-morning fall ball practice with overnight dew still on the turf? And as the world knows, you don’t have to be a communications professional to use social media.

Of the program’s surveyed, which covered a cross-section of FBS and FCS teams, two-thirds had at least some direct coach use across social media platforms for their team. Some are more involved than others.

“We’re experiencing this shift where more and more coaches are starting to use it,” said Kevin DeShazo, founder of Fieldhouse Media, a social media firm that has worked with more than 60 collegiate athletic departments nationwide in the last two years. “I wouldn’t say embrace it. Some certainly are, but they are at least starting to acknowledge and realize that we need to pay attention to this.”

At Albany, when Scott Marr hired Wolf as an assistant in the fall of 2011, one of the things the Albany alum did was pick up the team’s duties on Facebook. The team had a page, created by former assistant Chris Kivlen, now at Cornell, but Wolf really wanted to ramp up the presence.

“When I was an alumni, I wanted a connection to the program,” said Wolf, who was a member of three America East championship teams playing for his current boss Marr. “I thought it was the easiest way to keep in touch with people. That was what first got me into it. As everything just kept picking up a steam, it was just a really good way to have a presence on the Internet, or just feel like people have access to stuff they might not normally see.”

There are different approaches. Duke coach John Danowski, for example, goes “cold turkey” on his personal Twitter account once practice starts in the spring until the season is over, falling in line with his general philosophy of keeping players’ focused on the task at hand and blocking out outside comments. But when he’s on, he’s on. There is no doubting the authenticity. Who else but he would know he lost and found the cell phone he was tweeting from in a New York City taxicab one vacation?

Danger can be found and made on the Internet, too. Wolf says he will monitor players’ accounts and if he sees something questionable will follow-up with a conversation about how the player doesn’t just represent himself, but the program. The team will have a preseason social media talk and others during the year if needed. It’s a relatively common practice for many teams.

More and more across many sports, cases of coaches deciding to stop recruiting a particular player have sprouted up. A Penn State football coach in July tweeted, ironically, that he dropped a prospect from their radar because of his “social media presence.” University of Georgia head football coach Mark Richt made similar statements a few days later about a player who made inappropriate comments on two different public accounts.

DeShazo said of the colleges he’s worked with in the last two years, at least one coach from each of the more than 60 schools has told him they have been turned off from a potential recruit purely from his or her social media profile(s).

“It’s a risk assessment,” DeShazo said. “Is that kid worth it? Some say it’s not fair to judge a high school kid off of that, but we’re not talking about minor things. That stuff happens. We’re talking about racially, sexually degrading things, drugs, alcohol, violence, patterns of behavior. That becomes a red flag.”

Consider social media another fact of life. There are ways it can hurt you or ways it can help, and it is changing how organizations, corporations and even lacrosse teams operate. It’s making social media managers out of family members and assistant coaches, who don’t have the responsibilities listed on their official website biographies.

When the Thompsons announce one of their camps for the fall, you can find the information easily, O’Brien said, or inside-access photos and videos. More than 20,000 follow them on Instagram. “At the end of the day, we want to grow our name, the Thompson name and establish that in lacrosse more than it’s already been established,” he said.

With Lyle Thompson having one more year at Albany and the favorite to end up right back in Washington, D.C. at the Tewaaraton ceremony this May, Wolf’s phone is just about to start buzzing regularly again.

“For us, it’s more about engaging the community, our alumni and letting people in as much as we can without overexposure,” Wolf said. “I’m sure people got a little tired about reading about us all the time, but it was good for us. Everybody just wants access. Everybody wants to see what’s going on. We’re trying to give them as much as we can.”