Since the opening of the fall sports season, many may have noticed the influx of information about Berkley Athletics being delivered through social media, particularly Instagram. With the new “Hub” for Berkley Athletics as a whole, and new, and growing, accounts for individual sports, social media has become a crucial tool for the high school’s athletic department.
This all began with the new Athletic Director (AD), Matthew Rawlik, who was hired early this past summer. One of his first tasks as AD was to take on creating an Instagram account focusing only on Berkley athletics (@Berkley_Bears). For many students, it has quickly become the main place to get information on all things sports. It currently has 916 followers, a number that has been rapidly growing since its creation in early July.
To explain why he began this account, Mr. Rawlik says “I had used X, Instagram, and Facebook for baseball since I got that job in 2016, and I just thought it was an effective communication.” He mentions how Instagram is probably one of the most used apps by the students, and how parents and other staff had appreciated the communication for his previous baseball team in that form as well. With the new job, he wanted this to be more wide-scale across all athletics. He then mentions how “some teams do a really good job on the social media piece, and some not so much, and I figured that I might be able to step into that void,” so that information for all athletics could get out effectively and equally. Mr. Rawlik now has a variety of types of posts he makes to spread information about the happenings in each sport, including a “this week coming” post, usually posted on Sundays, individual game day posts for each sport, and even live updates or results in many major games.
Another new and useful feature used on the Instagram page is the use of a “collaboration,” where a post can be put on multiple account’s pages. For example, Mr. Rawlik creates most of the boys’ soccer graphics for their game day posts, and then invites the boys’ soccer Instagram page to “collaborate” on it, so that it posts for them as well. This way, the followers of both the main Berkley Bears page and the followers of the soccer page have the announcements pop up on their feeds. He also describes how he makes the graphics in the first place, using a program called BoxOut Sports which has a database for high school sports. “So if we’re playing Pontiac, I search Pontiac in the database, and it gives me Pontiac’s logo,” says Mr. Rawlik. It also gives him templates to use to make posts as well, making the whole process more efficient.
So, as one can imagine, the new account has been highly useful to students in general, but also to individual teams and their social media pages. Boys Varsity Soccer captain Kai Nielsen was able to speak to this. He highlights how “without [Mr. Rawlik]’s additions, the [soccer] account likely would look a lot worse, and have less interaction.” The soccer page was just created before the current season, and with the help of Mr. Rawlik, it has quickly gained a lot of popularity. They make posts almost daily, from all of the informational collaborations with @Berkley_Bears to some sneak peeks into team bonding activities as well. The page is now frequently used by students to get game time information, score updates, and more.
In addition to the soccer team, the girls golf team has seen a large increase in their social media account usage with Mr. Rawlik’s new additions. Captain of the girls golf team, Ella Hesano, describes how she has seen more interaction with her team’s posts since the new athletics Instagram page was created. She explains the use of collaboration posts similar to soccer, and expands on how the use of social media has helped her team grow. “It’s really encouraging–if you do good, you get posted as an MVP, and that gives people something to strive and work harder for,” she mentions. With these posts now being available to such a wider audience due to the main athletics page, the motivation just expands.
Similarly, Girls Varsity Volleyball captain Norah Eyeler discusses how the volleyball Instagram “benefits our team because it brings in more knowledge of what’s happening with volleyball, and that larger audience creates more energy and more fans. The fans motivate us to win games and work hard. If we know we’re going to have people coming to our games, we get motivated to work hard so we can show them the skills that we bring and the program we have built.” Their Instagram page has a wide variety of posts as well, from team bonding TikToks to fun senior picture sessions. They also have a good amount of collaborated posts with the new athletics page. Similar to Hesano and Nielsen, she is very happy about its creation. She noted how it is very nice to see a platform for the school’s athletics that is so organized, easy to access, and makes sure all of the sports get information out equally, especially the ones that many may not know as much about.
Mr. Rawlik seemed to have this goal as one of the centering motivations for the account as well. When asked what impact he hopes to make with its presence, he says, he wants to “Just increase awareness. Especially with the less ‘marquee’ sports,” he explains, referring to those sports that typically get less attention. “I think everyone knows when football games are right? ’cause there’s a simple rhythm to that. It’s a Friday night. Soccer, I think most people know, but when are the swim meets? When is tennis playing, you know? Golf is at a match all day today, but would you have known that?” With previous methods of communicating athletics information, it has been easy to skip over these sports that Mr. Rawlik is referring to. With this account, it is all in one place. When going through the account’s stories, you have to pass the repost of the Girls’s Swim victory over Royal Oak in order to look at the Football score. The Rugby game day posts just pop up on your feed, so it takes no additional time to learn about and support a wider variety of the High School’s athletics. With this, Mr. Rawlik expresses his hope to draw attention to the success of all sports and notes that it is important to highlight all of Berkley’s athletes, no matter the popularity of their sports. This account creates a platform that is both highly popular and advertises all sports in one place.
Overall, the new Berkley Bears account on Instagram has become an effective source of information for Berkley Athletics. It has brought more attention to individual sports accounts, and in turn, as the captains noted, brought more energy to the teams. It has begun to create a more connected program in which all sports support each other, and more fans reach a wider variety of sports. As Berkley moves forward into the fall, winter, and spring sports seasons, it is important for all fans to be informed about all the happenings, and maybe even attend a team event you wouldn’t usually attend!
So, go follow the various team accounts below!
@Berkley_Bears
Rugby @berkleygirlsrugby
Boys Soccer @berkley_boys_soccer
Girls Soccer @berkleygirlssoccer
Girls Tennis @bhsgirlsvarsitytennis
Boys Tennis @berkley_boys_tennis
Girls Basketball @berkleygirlsbb
Dance @berkleydanceteam
Football @berkleybearsfb
Hockey @m1griffinsunitedvarsityhockey
Girls Golf @berkleygirlsgolf
Boys Basketball @berkleyvarsitybasketball
Wrestling @berkley_wrestling
Cheer @berkleycheer
Unified Soccer @bhsunifiedsoccer
Softball @bhsvarsitysoftball2024
Boys Lacrosse @m1_lacrosse
Baseball @berkleybaseball
Girls Swim and Dive @berkleygirlsswimanddive
Volleyball @bhsvarsityvball
Cross Country @bhsbearscrosscountry
