By Talia Silbermann ‘23 and Gabrielle Zellan ‘23 Throughout the spring athletic season, Golda Och Academy students have been creating Instagram accounts for different GOA teams, expanding on a popular social media trend during the past few months. The story of these GOA sports pages started at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year with a prominent trend on Tik Tok. Students across the country made Instagram accounts exposing peers with poor posture, sleeping during class or not wearing their masks correctly.
One GOA student decided to take this trend in another direction. Sophomore Elliot Morely, who junior Julian Duberstein called, “GOA’s resident jock,” created the “GOA Sports Page,” a promotional Instagram account for Golda Och’s sports teams. Run by Morely and fellow sophomores Joey Askin and Doron Finkel, along with freshman Ari Jacobs, the account started off by posting about the GOA Boys Varsity Soccer team’s games and schedule. The account’s coverage then continued into basketball season, followed by baseball, and includes highlights of practices and games, in addition to schedules. Morley’s inspiration for making the sports account was simple: he wanted to “continue to be creative and turn it into another successful page.” However, there has been a noticeable absence on “GOA Sports Page” of posts about girls’ sports teams. Morley is not worried, though. “None of the girls have wanted to post on the account,” he said, “but they are welcome to hit me up if they want to.” Inspired by Morely’s idea, junior Rafael Turetsky decided to create an Instagram account for the Boys’ Varsity Tennis team called “goavarsitytennis,” and includes videos of players in their games and the season schedule. Turetsky’s main goal with the account is to promote the GOA Tennis team and influence people to support the team. As captain, Turetsky said he feels “responsible to keep the account updated and keep people informed.” An important detail that “GOA Varsity Tennis” followers may have noticed is that the team’s logo has been updated. In addition to creating the first GOA Tennis Instagram account, Turetsky also decided to create a new logo for the team, thinking of some ideas on his own and later having a graphic designer help make this into reality. In addition to posting highlights on the sports account, the students behind “GOA Sports Page” decided to have their own media day. Boys’ basketball, followed by boys’ baseball and girls’ softball teams each participated in one to advertise their sport. For media days, athletes wear their uniforms to look game-ready, while managers coordinate to get everyone to take pictures. Though mostly student-led, Mr. Mittleman, GOA’s multimedia producer and teacher, has played an important role in making these days come to life by providing backdrops and cameras. Thanks to students and Mr. Mittleman, media days have become a new GOA athletic tradition. As Mittleman says, “It will continue for years and we cannot wait to do more media days with more sports teams in the future.” Team managers then upload the photos to the Instagram pages, which represent the hard work the players have put in and the determination they have throughout the entire season. Sophomore Peri Newman, manager of the girls softball team, added, “The GOA sports Instagram pages really express how the season is going. I look forward to seeing what gets posted because it shows the players’ mindsets, and it is like a behind the scenes of what happens at practices or games.” Not only will media days continue next year, but when asked about the future of “GOA Sports Page,” Morley was confident that it will still be around next year, saying, “Of course, of course, the account will be back,” The “GOA Sports Page” has not only encouraged students to follow the Golda Och sports teams, but has also motivated the players. “GOA_sports_page” is now a prominent part of GOA athletics that seems here to stay. Comments are closed.
|
EditorsArielle Karni Archives
December 2024
|