Five SOJC public relations students pitched a social media strategy for Volo Sports as a class assignment. The brand adopted it as its 2025 campaign — and hired one of the students.
by McKenzie Leary, class of ’26
What started as a class project at the UO School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) is now an ongoing campaign for a national sports brand.
Five public relations students created a campaign for Volo Sports in SOJC Teaching Professor Kelli Matthews’ Social Media Strategies class. Volo Sports is the largest adult social and recreational sports network in the U.S., offering adult leagues, tournaments and pickup games in large cities around the country.
The partnership came about when Matthews reached out to UO alum Jackson Jeyanayagam ’00 (sociology). As Volo’s chief commercial officer, Jeyanayagam was enthusiastic about bringing Volo Sports in as a client for Matthews’ class.
Taught once a year, the class’ goal is to teach students how to conduct in-depth research, including competitor and audience analyses and a social media audit to create a strategic content campaign for clients.
Matthews expects students to consider what their data means and how they can translate their insights into actionable recommendations.
“I think the Volo team is a great example of how that works,” Matthews said. “Students collected the data, they did the research — external and internal — and they came up with a campaign.”
Persisting through technical challenges
Sadie Schumaker ’26, a fourth-year public relations student, was designer and editor for the Volo Sports campaign.
At first, the team had no idea how successful their campaign would be. At the beginning of their research process, they hit a major obstacle. The analytics program they had planned to use wasn’t working, which left the team no other option than to analyze Volo’s posts one by one. This was a time-consuming process that put pressure on their deadline.
But once they finished their research, their campaign began to form.
“We wanted to target 21- to 35-year-olds because it’s the age where you’re coming out of undergrad, possibly moving to a new city and don’t know what activities you can do or who to connect with,” Schumaker said. “We thought that was perfect because we are all seniors and thinking about our futures.”
The catchiest part of their campaign was their pitch, “Play Here. Belong Here.”
“I’m not someone who likes sports,” Schumaker said. “But I still felt like this was a place I could go to, could be a part of and belong. That was where ‘Play Here. Belong Here’ came from.”
Positive response to a campaign pitch
At the end of the term, the team — Avery Brickman, Myles Brooks, Sofia Gonzalez, Ashley Heeren, and Schumaker — presented its work to Volo’s nationwide marketing team.
The students shared their research, key insights and content strategy for Volo Sports. They received positive feedback from the Volo team right away, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that Schumaker received a text in her group chat about how the Volo marketing team loved their idea and were going to implement it.
“When they presented ‘Play Here, Belong Here,’ our marketing team immediately recognized it as our 2025 campaign,” Jeyanayagam said. “It perfectly aligned with our strategy and solved a challenge we had been working through internally. We’re incredibly appreciative of the team’s thoughtful, strategic and creative work, and I look forward to partnering with another outstanding group of Oregon students soon.”
It wasn’t long before Schumaker began to see the campaign come to life, appearing on billboards in New York City and across Volo Sports’ social media accounts.
Following the campaign’s success, Schumaker, who felt passionate about the work she did in class, reached out to Ducote Contreras, the head of brand growth and customer acquisition at Volo Sports, about an internship. After seeing the hard work her group did, they were eager to bring Schumaker on board.
After graduation this spring, Schumaker will move to Philadelphia to work as a media sports marketing intern.
“I can see myself working there for a long time,” she said.
Schumaker said her classroom project unexpectedly turned into a career opportunity, and showed her how student work at the SOJC can extend far beyond campus.
McKenzie Leary is a fourth-year public relations major in the UO School of Journalism and Communication, minoring in global studies. She is passionate about creating multimedia narratives, traveling and advocacy. McKenzie loves having the opportunity to share people’s stories and recently finished her first novel.