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Julia Mendelson’s career in sports started before she even knew she wanted one.
As a sophomore in high school, two of Julia’s friends were planning to manage their school’s ice hockey team and needed a third person to join them. Julia needed an extracurricular, her friends needed another manager, so after a little convincing, she agreed.
There was only one problem. She knew absolutely nothing about hockey.
Julia spent that first season learning everything from how the scoreboard worked to penalties and icing, and somewhere along the way, she realized she actually really enjoyed it. What started as an extracurricular she had been pressured into became a three-year commitment through the end of high school.
Still, when Julia arrived at Miami University, working in sports wasn’t really on her radar. She entered college planning to study psychology and biology with the goal of eventually becoming a genetic counselor. After one semester, she realized psychology wasn’t nearly as interesting to her as it had been in high school and started exploring other options.
That’s when she discovered sport management.
Julia switched her major during her sophomore year and, just like in high school, found herself back around a hockey rink. A friend on Miami’s women’s ice hockey team connected her with an opportunity to serve as a team manager, helping with live streams, social media, game preparation, and whatever else the team needed.
Those two hockey experiences gave Julia the foundation she needed to land a number of internships throughout college. She started with the Frederick Keys, a small baseball team in the MLB Draft League. Even though she wasn’t initially hired for it, she volunteered to own the team's short form content and quickly was producing videos that were surpassing 100k views.
Building off of the success, she completed social media internships with Miami’s athletic department, the Tri-City Chili Peppers, and even picked up a part time social media job with a new restaurant in Oxford, OxVegas Chicken, improving her craft every step of the way.
Julia’s Career Path
By her senior year, Julia had built quite the resume. She had worked in college athletics, two different baseball organizations, and helped launch a restaurant’s social channels.
As she headed into her final semester, she began applying for full time roles. It didn’t take long to get her first bite: IMG Academy.
The original conversation was for a full-time position starting in February, but there was a pretty obvious problem… Julia still had an entire semester of college left.
Rather than leave it there, Julia asked if there was any way she could help them on a freelance or part-time basis while she finished school. She didn’t hear much for the next month and a half, until IMG came back with an unexpected answer: they had created a freelance position for her.
Julia spent the next several months editing vertical content remotely for IMG Academy while finishing her degree at Miami. When the internal team had footage they couldn’t get to, they sent it her way and gave her the freedom to put her own spin on it.
Even while working with IMG, Julia continued to apply and search for her for a full time role to take on after graduation. She graduated in May, but despite her best efforts and all the work she had put in leading to this point, she still hadn’t found her golden opportunity.
Undeterred, she continued working with IMG and applying for every role she could find, and finally, in October it paid off.
Julia started as a Digital Media Intern with the Denver Nuggets the week of the team’s 2024 home opener and was immediately thrown into the deep end. Working in the NBA introduced her to a completely different level of social media. She learned how to write in a team’s voice, clip highlights, incorporate statistics, cover games live, and somehow keep track of what needed to be posted next while she was still working on what was happening right in front of her.
The internship lasted ten months, through the end of the season and NBA Summer League. By the time it wrapped up in July 2025, Julia figured she was in a pretty good spot.
Ten months working in the NBA had to make finding the next opportunity easier, right?
Not exactly.
What is a Social Media Manager?
A Social Media Manager is responsible for helping shape how a team or organization shows up online. In sports, that can include brainstorming content ideas, filming and editing videos, writing copy, managing a content calendar, clipping highlights, and publishing across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Facebook. The goal is to capture the personality of the team and create content that keeps fans engaged beyond what happens on the field or court.
Game days make the role especially unique. Social teams are often capturing content while simultaneously posting highlights, scores, reactions, and behind-the-scenes moments in real time. It requires creativity, strong writing and editing skills, an understanding of each platform, and the ability to move quickly when something unexpected happens. For anyone interested in breaking into sports social media, building a portfolio of work and gaining hands-on experience creating content are two of the best places to start.
Julia entered a difficult job market while searching within an already tiny corner of the sports industry. She applied, interviewed, and collected more rejections than she expected. Eventually, the opportunity that came along was with the Colorado Eagles, a minor league hockey team.
And it was unpaid.
After spending ten months working in the NBA, taking an unpaid internship was a tough pill to swallow. Julia admits it felt, at least initially, like she had taken a step backward. She wondered if she hadn’t learned enough, if her previous experience wasn’t enough, or if she simply wasn’t good enough yet.
But she also knew sitting around waiting for the perfect job wasn't going to help.
The Eagles gave her a chance to keep creating, keep adding to her portfolio, and gain more hands-on experience inside professional sports. She took it, while being transparent with her manager that she would continue looking for a full-time opportunity.
A few months later, that decision paid off.
The San Jose Sharks were looking for a Content Engagement & Social Assistant, and Julia’s experience with the Eagles translated almost directly to what they needed. After her second interview, she had a feeling the opportunity might be real. When the offer eventually came, she had just a couple of weeks to pack up and start the next chapter of her career in the NHL.
Today, Julia helps create content across the Sharks’ social platforms, working on everything from vertical video and game-day coverage to copy, highlights, and content featuring players and fans.
It’s the definition of a full circle moment. In high school, Julia didn't know the rules of hockey, let alone that you could build a career creating content around it.
Eight years later, she's doing exactly that in the NHL.
Q&A: Landing a job in Sports Social Media with Julia Mendelson
Q. You have created content across college athletics, Minor League Baseball, the NBA, AHL, and NHL. How do you learn and adapt to the voice of a new team, sport, or audience?
A. Unfortunately learning the voice of a team or what the audience likes or doesn't like in a video isn't something that can be taught, it's something that you learn over time. Learning the voice of the team, what videos perform well and what doesn't all comes with trial and error. It's the kind of thing where the more you do it, the better you get at understanding it all.
With doing fun short-form content, the big thing I've noticed with creating content for all of these different leagues is one thing: keep the video short and entertaining. Figuring out different ways to edit and keep people entertained from the first second of the video to the last is key, and once I figured out how to do that through my editing, it made creating content for any team that much easier.
Q. Sports social media is about much more than knowing trends or spending time online. What skills separate someone who enjoys social media from someone who can manage it professionally?
A. The ability to multitask and focus on multiple things all at once is a skill that is needed to work in sports social media that is not talked about enough. Especially when live posting during a game, there are so many things going on at once. You're talking with your social media team, fans are screaming and cheering, and there is a game being played that you also need to be paying attention to. While posting something, creating copy, formatting the post, making sure everything is spelled correctly, you also have to be paying attention to the game that is being played because the basket, goal, touchdown, or crazy play that is currently going on, could be your next post.
Q. After working with the Denver Nuggets, you accepted an unpaid opportunity with the Colorado Eagles before landing with the Sharks. What helped you stay confident and continue moving forward during that period?
A. Accepting an unpaid internship after working in the NBA was definitely a shot to my ego, I can't even lie about that. But also, the decision to accept the internship did not come easily to me. I kept wondering if I was doing myself a disservice by accepting, but eventually I realized I would have done a bigger disservice to myself by turning it down.
When I get messages asking about advice for working in sports, I tell people to not count out unpaid positions because while they are unpaid, you still get great experience, so it would have been hypocritical of me to do just that. During my time working there, I always knew that for however long I was there, it would lead me to my next big thing. So, while an unpaid position after working for an NBA team was definitely not on my bingo card, I tried not to think of it as a setback, but as another step in my path that was going to lead me somewhere big. Without that unpaid position, I may not be working in the NHL now.
Key Takeaways
1. Raise your hand
Julia repeatedly created opportunities by simply asking to get involved. Whether it was taking over the Frederick Keys’ TikTok, introducing herself to Miami Athletics, or asking IMG about freelance work, she made it known that she wanted to help.
2. Prioritize your portfolio
In social media, your work can speak just as loudly as your resume. Julia used each opportunity to create content, develop her editing style, and build a portfolio that showed future employers exactly what she could do.
3. Don’t give up!
Julia worked in the NBA and still struggled to land her next role. Instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity, she took an unpaid position with the Colorado Eagles, kept applying, and eventually turned that experience into her current role with the San Jose Sharks. Careers rarely move in a perfectly straight line.
Feeling Inspired? Check out these opportunities.
Internships
-Digital and Social Media Internship | Colorado Eagles (Where Julia worked!)
Full Time Opportunities
-Content Engagement & Social Coordinator | San Jose Sharks (Where Julia works!)
Closing Thoughts
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of So You Want to Work in Sports. I appreciate you being part of this community.
If you have ideas, feedback, or future guest suggestions, feel free to reach out at [email protected].
If you want more hands-on support as you navigate the start of your career within sports, book a 1:1 session with me here. The sooner you start preparing, the more confident you will feel when opportunities come your way.
Win the week!
-Ethan
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