How top North Texas high school athletes use social media to their advantage
Remember phone calls on your landline or mailing someone a letter?
Not anymore.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat have become ways to communicate and have quickly translated into high school sports as local athletes go through their recruitment.
More than half the people in the world use one form of social media.
“Social media is sort of a big part of my life just because I find it interesting to see what other people are up to, as well as sharing my ideas,” Arlington Martin senior Javien Toviano said.
“It’s ongoing and a learning process for all of us, certainly for me,” Martin football coach Bob Wager added. “It brings fans in closer than ever before. For some of the elite players, they value it. Their followers have value.”
Toviano plays cornerback and running back for the Martin football team and is one of the top-ranked players in the country. According to 247Sports, Toviano is the fourth-best cornerback in the nation and the fifth-best football player in Texas among the Class of 2023.
He’s also the top-ranked Fort Worth-area football player in 2022.
He has 12,000 followers on Instagram.
“I don’t take too much into account for it, but it’s definitely cool to see that many people interested in my life and what I have going on,” Toviano said. “It’s definitely intriguing at times.”
Interaction
Toviano holds 34 offers, including 28 from Power Five schools.
He has narrowed his list down to eight: Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M, Oregon, Michigan, Ohio State and LSU. Of course, with so many followers, Toviano always gets comments from superfans.
“All the time,” Toviano said. “College football fans are the most unique group of individuals on this planet. Hardcore ride or die fans often times try to share the greatness of their school as well as their unconditional support.”
They’ll even comment on posts unrelated to football.
“I posted me and my brother’s dog on my Instagram story and I had Hook ‘Em comments and come here, come there,” laughed Toviano, who helped Martin open the season with a win over Austin Lake Travis.
Toviano has more than 6,700 followers on TikTok.
He has another 2,100 followers on Twitter.
Justin Northwest 4-star quarterback Jake Strong is committed to Texas Tech. Ever since he chose the Red Raiders, the fan base has increased its interaction on Twitter.
Strong, No. 5 in the Star-Telegram Top 100, has more than 5,000 followers on Twitter.
“During my recruitment process I would get many comments on my Twitter from fans of the different places I visited,” Strong said. “To this day many fan pages and various other fans of Texas Tech always comment words of encouragement and compliments to me as a young man and as an athlete.”
While Toviano goes on social media almost every day, he doesn’t post much.
He has less than 100 tweets compared to over 3,000 for Strong.
Mansfield 4-star defensive lineman Kaleb James, an Arkansas commit, has over 3,500.
“I use Twitter primarily to promote myself and update my followers on accolades, offers, visits and to promote friends,” said James, No. 20 in the Top 100. “I also used to stay in touch with college coaches and fans.”
Toviano said he uses Instagram just about every day and he feels that it’s the most used app of his generation.
“There are times where I don’t really interact with social media or days where I don’t go on the apps as much,” Toviano said. “If social media was to not be a thing tomorrow, I think it’ll take me a little time getting used to, but I don’t think it’ll be completely distraught to me.
“I don’t think I expect a great deal out of social media. I think it’s something we just use to portray and display ourselves and what we are experiencing in our daily lives.”
Watch what you post
Aledo junior Vivian Parker is among the area’s top volleyball players.
She is No. 11 in the Star-Telegram Top 25.
Parker has 689 followers on Twitter, 2,500 on Instagram and 700 on TikTok.
“I’ll post about our game or any other team related news. I also retweet a lot of things that I agree with that are motivating or news going on in the volleyball community,” said Parker, who was named to the all-area preseason team. “I try to tweet about teammates or friends that are doing amazing or commit to a college since that is a huge deal. I try to make sure to congratulate people that win awards or recognition.
“If someone posts something motivational, I retweet it and if there are topics that are happening to athletes or the sport that I agree with, I’ll retweet, comment or like those.”
James and Strong tend to post more during the season.
It includes clips and any announcements about recruiting.
“The thing I expected out of social media was to help my recruitment and to help brand myself as an athlete and spread a positive message to others in the world,” James said.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of negativity on social media.
High school athletes need to be cautious what they tweet or like.
“We follow our athletes closely. We have some ground rules for them,” Wager said. “We just don’t tell them the what, but we tell them the why. Social media isn’t real.
“What’s real is in that weight room and on the field. No matter how many people like you, dislike you, comment, our accountability is to their teammates in that locker room.”
Strong knows that social media can go both ways.
He said it’s a great resource for recruitment, but must be done in a correct manner.
It’s also a reflection of one’s self.
“What you put out there on social media is a glimpse into a little bit of who you are as a person. The flip side of social media can be used to put up a front of who you aren’t. It’s very easy to hide behind a screen and only post certain things to manipulate the narrative of who you are,” Strong said.
Parker added, “It’s definitely talked about by my parents, my school coaches, my club coaches, older players that are in college, and college coaches on phone calls. I’ve definitely experienced seeing something on social media cost someone in a big way.”
Instagram and TikTok
Instagram was founded in 2010.
TikTok was released in 2016.
While Twitter reflects more of the recruiting side for most athletes, Instagram and TikTok are used more to show your personal life and your interests.
“Instagram is a much more personal app where you can get a small glimpse into what my personality and life is like,” Parker said. “I don’t communicate with coaches very often on Instagram, but they will be very active with liking my posts or stories as I give small updates about my life.
“It’s also nice getting the chance to see what their lives are like outside of volleyball. How they interact with family, hanging out with friends, going on vacation. It always keeps recruiting in perspective realizing that coaches have a life outside of volleyball as well.”
James has 3,800 followers on Instagram and another 2,800 on TikTok.
He said he doesn’t post much on TikTok, but some of his videos have received a lot of attention. He went on to say he probably could drop it all tomorrow.
“I feel like social media has done some good, but at the same time a lot of bad in the world,” James said. “Sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like when my parents were growing up in the 90s without it.”
Midlothian’s Kenna Buchanan and Mansfield Legacy’s Brynn Dowd have over 3,000 followers on Instagram.
Keller Central’s Karly Wells has over 5,000 on TikTok.
“Relationships are the best part of club volleyball. There are so many ways to start conversations and build relationships at tournaments that you don’t want them to end so the easiest way is to look up or connect on Instagram or TikTok,” Parker said. “So my following isn’t about content, it’s about building real life relationships and then staying in touch. That’s Instagram and TikTok, and Twitter is for recruiting.”
NIL deals
Social media has been a good source of communication over the past decade, but it’s recently become a much more important tool for young athletes, especially in college.
The NCAA implemented the NIL policy in the summer of 2021.
College athletes can profit from from their name, image or likeness (NIL). Even some high school athletes can make a quick buck, but not those in Texas.
Texas doesn’t allow high school athletes to profit off their NIL.
Southlake Carroll’s Quinn Ewers is the most notable Fort Worth-area athlete to do this. He choose to forgo his senior year last season, enroll at Ohio State and struck a multi-million dollar deal.
At the time, Ewers had over 130,000 followers between Twitter and Instagram.
Now he has over 150,000 between the two with 126,000 on Instagram alone.
“It hasn’t really been a priority in my recruitment. Of course it’s great that we are allowed to make money now from simply just being on a roster. Also having the ability to perform at the highest levels and get paid incentives for it,” Toviano said. “It’s definitely something that I keep in the back of my mind because you have to be aware of the benefits that you could be making at 18 and 19 years old in college, but as for me, I haven’t really made it my main focus nor the reason I play the sport.”
James, Strong and Parker all agreed that NIL is not a main focus, but opportunities will eventually come.
“When I started out on this journey my main goal was to get a scholarship to continue to play a game that I love, get an education, and an opportunity to make it to the NFL,” Strong said. “Fast forward to the present and with NIL a reality, I really stay focused on why I was doing what I was doing. The NIL opportunities will come when they come, but my focus is on being the best student-athlete I can be.”
