Connections are everything. A unique opportunity presented in this class makes us step outside of our comfort zone and reach out to a sport professional. Establishing a contact like this is valuable in many ways such as identifying their path, learning about the industry, and sometimes even future opportunities.
I chose to reach out to Ryan Parncutt, who is the Director of Athletics Marketing and Social Media at Old Dominion University. Ms. Parncutt is someone I wanted to connect with because I have seen the progression of ODU athletics social media in my time here, and there has been a significant and noticeable jump in quality since she took over in 2024. With this jump in quality, the various ODU athletics social media pages have seen a significant jump in followers, most notably baseball. The instagram page for the baseball team jumped from around six-thousand followers in late 2023/early 2024, to close to eleven thousand at the time of this post. That means the follower count almost doubled in the last two years…wow. It is clear that Ms. Parncutt has a talent for sports media, and I’m excited this connection was made and can be exercised throughout the semester.
Establishing contact was actually fairly smooth, as a quick google search presented a university website that included contact information for Ms. Parncutt. In her bio, the university adds that she competed on the womens soccer team at ODU prior to her role in marketing. It also adds she has a bachelor of science degree and is pursing a masters degree in sports management.