If you had told a teenaged Merisa Boyd that she would be in Bermuda in ten years’ time photographing a professional football team, she would not have believed you. However, on a surprisingly warm day in February, there she was capturing content for Rhode Island Football Club before their match against a Bermuda Select.

Only nine months into her role as the USL Championship side’s senior social-media manager, the 28-year-old travelled with the group for a preseason tournament in the homeland of Khano Smith, their head coach and general manager.

Like Rhode Island, who surprised many by getting to the championship final in 2024 before losing to the Colorado Springs Switchbacks, Ms Boyd is a representation of the emerging era of social media in sport.

Growing up in a sports-mad community in western Massachusetts, she was a well-rounded athlete. She played soccer — as they call it in the United States — lacrosse, basketball, softball, ran track, and danced. While Ms Boyd did not see a future for herself as a professional athlete, she figured she could translate her passion for sport into a related career.

“It was easy to think about what I wanted to do for my career,” she said. “I wanted to work in sport, but I knew I was never going to actually play sports professionally; it was always just a hobby.”

An ambitious high school student, Ms Boyd contacted the social-media personality for the Boston Bruins NHL hockey team, asking for advice on what to study to put her in the best position to enter the field of sports media. She would go on to get her bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies from Emmanuel College, and a master’s degree in public relations from Emerson College. As a student, she wrote for her school’s newspaper with a focus on sportswriting, initially leaning towards a career in journalism. It was not until she had taken a few public relations classes in her junior year, though, that she found her niche.

Ms Boyd landed her first sports internship with the Worcester Blades, the now-defunct women’s professional ice hockey team. As a self-described “big Bruins fan”, she and her family watched the games frequently growing up, attending as many hockey games as they could. As an undergraduate student, beginning her career in sport with a hockey team was a natural first step.

Once in graduate school, Ms Boyd was able to land a position with her favourite team — the Boston Bruins, the third-oldest team in the NHL and six-times winners of the Stanley Cup. In her role in game-day marketing, she helped to co-ordinate their community events, and provided promotional support for home games and team events. Capitalising on her success with the Bruins, six months later she secured a similar role with the legendary Boston Red Sox, the most iconic franchise in sports-laden Beantown.

Working in marketing and relations for two of the major league teams of her home state, she was making big strides early on in her career.

Unfortunately, this came to a halt when the coronavirus pandemic paused the sports world and both of her jobs. Ms Boyd rejoined the Red Sox as an in-game social-media producer for the 2021 season — her first position devoted solely to social media, where she learnt what went into building a social-media platform for a professional sports team.

Ms Boyd took her experiences and skills to secure her first full-time role working in communications for the New England Revolution in Major League Soccer. Two years later, she landed with Rhode Island FC and has grown with the experience.

One of the most important things she has learnt in her job is the importance of having a good team around you.

“Social media in sport has become its own field now,” she said. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of people behind it. I can’t do everything by myself.”

A generation of younger professional athletes that have grown up with social media has only pushed the demand for the field forward. Mykel Nayeri, the club’s Head of Video Analysis, echoes this belief and commends the “high-quality interactive content” produced by Ms Boyd and her team.

“I care just as much, if not more than a lot of the players,” she said. “It’s a great motivational tool, especially with hype videos, daily vlogs or whatever. The players want to be a part of it and I want to be a part of it as well.”

Ms Boyd credits her success to having an excellent support system of coworkers, players and coaches. Rhode Island FC were founded in 2019 and had their inaugural season in 2024, so developing a social-media platform for a new team presented both a challenge and an exciting experiment.

She said: “They are more open and willing to have new ideas and let me try some things. Sometimes it doesn’t work and they’re still like, ‘whatever’. You can try again or try something else.”

While she greatly enjoys the creativity and freedom of her job, Ms Boyd emphasises that it is not all about likes and comments. A typical nine-to-five schedule consists of weekly meetings with various departments, attending training sessions to capture content, ensuring that the team are showcased, adhering to branding guidelines and targeting goals.

Game days and travel days mean arriving about four hours before the team to work and get everything ready to go for the game. During a game day, she typically takes more than 2,000 photos that she has to quickly assess, edit the few that make the final cut and post them while the game is live. Regardless, the long hours and hard work is just a small price to pay for the joy of building a community for the football club.

“It gives fans a bigger reason to cheer for them, not just because they scored goals but also because they are incredibly funny and endearing,” Ms Boyd said.

“They are showing a personality that fans might not know they have — because on the field and in the games, fans are just seeing the soccer player; they are not seeing the person as much.”

Highlighting the voices of her team is important because Ms Boyd knows what it feels like to be lost in a crowd. She is a member of the growing group of women working in the sports industry. Even though it is becoming increasingly normalised to see diversity of race, sex and gender identity in the workforce, she recognises it was not always this way.

“There were moments where you sit in a room and then look around and realise you’re the only woman here,” she said. “It’s not always the first thing you notice, but then you take a second and you can’t unsee it.”

When it comes to making content for the social-media pages, building trust between the players and the staff is key. Establishing a good relationship with the team is crucial to the success of any media department.

“I make sure they know that we’re not trying to make them look bad. Once they know that, they are more willing to do fun and silly things with you. It’s not a malicious thing; I’m doing this because they are funny and endearing.”

The social-media presence that she has created for Rhode Island FC is a testament of her hard work and her passion for storytelling in the world of sport.

“I just try to showcase the person over the athlete, showing that he’s a real person and they have real personalities and stories. They’re all in the same place now, but they all have different stories of how they got here.”

So has Merisa Boyd.