Community Involvement, Fan Engagement and Relationship Building

One item that I am incredibly proud of during my time with Northeast Athletics has been the introduction of "High-Five Friday." I have worked closely with area elementary and middle schools to set up a Friday during the year where our Northeast student-athletes can come to local school and greet students as they walk into the building for the day.

Each athletic program takes a turn throughout the year and overall, the program has been an enormous success throughout the four years that it has been in place. We have received countless emails, phone calls and messages on social media about how students have talked for days about how exciting it was to have collegiate players out to see them at their school!

Those grade-school students gained mentors and the program has led to more of those area kids coming out and attending our athletic events.

Below are some pictures of our various programs vising local schools:

Working with organizations on campus and in our community is an emphasis for me and Northeast, such as below where we worked with our counseling department to where green warm-up shirts and green accent gear to promote free counseling services on campus and awareness for suicide prevention.

We also have brought out local clubs to walk with our soccer teams and other programs out to the field before our home matches!

We also place an importance on our student-athletes volunteering in the community, as you can see to the left where some of our softball players spent time at the local humane society.

As you can see on the right, we have made it a point to even host versions of practice at local elementary schools to get our in the community.

One event within our community that I am particularly proud of has been our Northeast in Omaha events! Omaha is roughly two hours from our campus and has a large alumni base, so we have played preseason soccer matches against Creighton University and the University of Nebraska Omaha where we have drawn attention to our college, given opportunities to our student-athletes on a large stage and have fundraised for our athletic department!

Our men's soccer program even defeated the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2024!

All of our athletic programs also host annual kids camps. One summer, I overheard one elementary schooler say, "Wow, I can't believe that college athletes play on the same court that I am on right now!" Running these camps effectively on top of other events such as local parades have been great tools in improving our footprint in the community as a college and has brought a younger demographic to our games.

We love getting our student-atheltes out at local parades as a way continuing growing our brand and foothold in our community!

The picture below shows a few of our men's soccer student-athletes working a local event called, "SpringTacular." I coordinated this event with our men's soccer team and it was a huge hit with area children! Our men's soccer coach received multiple emails from parents letting him know how much it meant to them to see our No. 1 ranked men's soccer team out and about in the community.

After the launch of our new athletic brand in the spring of 2024, I had the opportunity to speak about our exciting new insignias as multiple events around our town. Those included:

Nebraska School Activities Association's State Journalism Contest
Norfolk Junior High's Career Day
The Rotary Club of Norfolk, Nebraska

Graduation is something that we place a lot of weight on at Northeast, and in my role I value tracking our student-athletes in their career after the depart Northeast, such as Lewis Rourke (pictured below) who went on to NCAA DI institution Old Dominion University and scored 10 goals during his junior season at the DI level.

We also have started a tradition of gathering our department and sending off all of our teams who are competing in playoff contests on the road, which has been a ton of fun and has brought all of our student-athletes together even tighter than they were before.

We also occasionally host events outside of our own athletic contests at Northeast, such as the Northeast Nebraska All-Star Basketball and Volleyball Games, and I play a key role in working with community leaders and coaches to make these events successful.