Heavy breathing, squeaks of shoes and witty banter echoes through an empty gym as two basketball players match up in an intense one-on-one game. One of them is FlightReacts, a basketball influencer with nearly 5 million subscribers on YouTube, and the other is Harker alum Roy Yuan, a Division I basketball player for Stanford. This showdown captures the growing intersection between the world of content creation and traditional athletics.

Yuan attended Harker from eighth to ninth grade from 2015-16 and played on the basketball team. He later enrolled at Stanford, not as a basketball recruit, but as a student. To pursue his goal of playing Division I basketball, he became Stanford men’s basketball’s team manager in his sophomore year and spent free time practicing in the gym. Gradually, the coach noticed Yuan’s skills and talent and in senior year, offered him a spot on the team.

However, Yuan never set out to become a content creator. Last year, he filmed a one-on-one basketball game with a friend and casually uploaded the video to a new YouTube channel. His video quickly went viral, garnering over 700,000 views. Many of these viewers remained interested in his content; currently, he has 48.9K and 14.8K followers on YouTube and Instagram, respectively. 

“It gives me a reason to continue playing basketball and gives me more motivation,” Yuan said.
“A lot of people like to reach out, and it’s fun meeting new people and doing collaborations through social media with other creators.” 

His talent and social media presence allowed him to play one-on-one with major basketball content creators like CashNasty and FlightReacts. However, after Yuan graduated and began working for an AI cloud infrastructure provider, his goals for social media shifted from just playing basketball to documenting his life and connecting with other players.

“As I think more and more about what I want to do, doing more vlogs centered around basketball rather than just playing seems more interesting,” Yuan said. “Basketball around the world and in different leagues is very different. I want to explore what the hoop scene in other places of the world is like.”

While Yuan began posting in college, some student-athletes began building their platform earlier. Frosh Faye Gu launched her journey as a dance influencer in middle school after partnering with the popular dancewear brand AK Dancewear. Though she shared a few videos on her Instagram account before, that collaboration encouraged her to post more consistently, especially as positive comments and messages from viewers made the experience more rewarding.

Harker’s varsity girls volleyball team also runs an Instagram account, and they film casual videos of trends and post-game recaps. Senior Eden Kelly, who edits and posts videos on that account, shared that filming together before or after games improved team camaraderie and morale. 

She emphasized that the purpose of the account is mainly to attract students to watch their games, rather than growing their followers or likes. She hopes that by continuing to post, they can fill the stands more during their matches.

“It’s more about, ‘Guys, please come to our game,’” Eden said. “Even if the reel gets only 20 likes, but five of those people show up, I would much rather have that than getting 100 likes and only two of those people show up. It’s more about having people show up and support us.”

Posting quality content on social media regularly is no easy task. Student-athletes already need to balance practice and schoolwork. Managing a social media account adds even more to their workload. Yuan shared his advice for student-athletes navigating their commitments alongside influencing.

“There’s a lot of pressure in everyone’s lives, but ultimately it’s just about deciding what you want to do,” Yuan said. “If I had time and if there’s an opportunity, I would go do it, but I would never prioritize that over things like school or player duties.”

Ultimately, athlete influencers have different motivations for maintaining a social media account. Eden aims to build support for her team and attract people to their games, Yuan sees his social media accounts as creative outlets and paths to collaboration, while Faye hopes to foster a supportive online community for dancers.

“I really hope young dancers can get inspired by my posts,” Faye said. “I hope they can be inspired to compete or join dance events and become more confident in themselves and their dancing. I’m really happy about being able to connect with people through my account because it helps me promote both AK and me.”