This article appears in the March edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, available exclusively to US Lacrosse members. Join or renew today! Thank you for your support.
It was an uncharacteristically quiet week on Katie DeFeo’s social media.
Even by the standards of the COVID-19 pandemic — when out of respect to people suffering, DeFeo stopped posting as much irreverent personal content and focused more on inspirational messages — this felt different.
DeFeo’s 27,800 Instagram followers soon learned the reason. She had COVID-19 in early January. She ran a fever. Rested for a day or two. Recovered. Assumed everything was fine. Weeks later, she woke up with chest pains. She went to the hospital, just in case.
She would not leave for six days.
“It is just a crazy and freaky virus,” said DeFeo, a USC senior and content creator, who traded a Division I lacrosse career to chase her dream of shooting video full time. “I went in with the clothes off my back, wallet, phone and keys. I was scared because I don’t like not knowing what’s wrong.”
What was wrong was inflammation of DeFeo’s heart related to COVID-19. She was too weak to do much. She wasn’t cutting video. She sure wasn’t shooting sporting events. She spent the week watching sports instead, taking in from her hospital bed whatever ESPN offered.
When DeFeo left, she felt it was important for her followers to know that even a young athlete was not out of the woods in the aftermath of COVID-19.
“Everyone knows it’s their civic duty to wear a mask,” DeFeo said. “I wanted people who may have already had COVID like I did to listen to their bodies and not underestimate it.”
On Instagram, DeFeo posted a masked-up picture from the hospital. Celebrity followers from the lacrosse world (Paul Rabil, Taylor Cummings, Myles Jones) and beyond (Miami Dolphins lineman Austin Jackson) sounded off in the comments to wish her well. She posted a picture of her mother driving her home. On Twitter (1,700 followers) she shouted out former USC teammate, sometimes videography partner, forever friend, and suddenly West Coast emergency contact, Izzy McMahon, for being there for her.
“I was really worried actually,” said McMahon, who did not know she was DeFeo’s emergency contact until she texted from the hospital. “You see all these athletes and people our age with complications. We think we’re not high risk. We think we’re just able to bounce back.”
In some ways, the posts were a return to form for DeFeo. She built her brand by chronicling very personal details of her wacky world, being a fish out of water plunked into paradise with 30 other East Coast laxers. The pandemic forced her to scale back. Her personal brand is fun, showing her, in her own words, “galivanting around LA.” Staying the course didn’t seem right.
Which isn’t surprising if you know DeFeo. She adapts. A few months before the pandemic started, she left behind her college lacrosse career to pursue her dreams full time. In addition to her personal brand, she’s found success shooting pro athletes with Spellman Performance and for the Premier Lacrosse League.
“It’s the best decision I ever made,” DeFeo said. “I love going to work every day. I love getting to tell their stories.”
That doesn’t mean the decision was easy. DeFeo felt like she had one foot in and one foot out as a college athlete. McMahon said if anyone else had started talking about leaving lacrosse to chase some dream, she might have talked them out of it. But DeFeo was different.
“I knew Katie had something she would love to do,” McMahon said. “And I said, ‘If this is what you really want and you have a plan, I’m all for you and I’m going to support you.’ People were already asking her to shoot these big opportunities, but she couldn’t take them. I knew she was going to be OK.”
USC provided the perfect setting to chase her dream. Hollywood is just around the corner. There are elite athletes everywhere. But when DeFeo committed as a high school sophomore out of Severna Park (Md.), she had no idea what she wanted to do.
DeFeo had always had a camera in her hand. Ever since she was 10, when she got a little flip camera for Christmas and put a video of her dad making Thanksgiving turkey on YouTube (63,500 subscribers).
Music videos with friends followed. “Call Me Maybe.” The usual preteen fare. A video set to that song by Iyaz stands out, years later. She reversed each scene to show her friends dancing backward. Replays for “Replay.”
“I literally thought it was the most creative thing in the world,” DeFeo said. “I thought it was like groundbreaking stuff.”
She laughed, but it was an early indication of the groundbreaking stuff she was capable of. At USC, DeFeo would walk around with her friends — a group of lax girls with the same interests, from the same lacrosse towns back East, rolling through a literal paradise — and realize someone had to chronicle it.
People loved the videos. That spring, she piled into a car with McMahon and Amanda Flayhan, drove across the country to Foxborough, Mass., and shot videos at the final four. People were shouting her out. The brand was cemented.
“It’s awesome just being in that atmosphere when you feel people above you sitting on top of her,” McMahon said. “I’m a little jealous.”
DeFeo knew it was real when she started a YouTube series called “KT VS.” She and Kerrigan Miller, who is now at North Carolina as graduate transfer, would go to a field and shoot raw videos of DeFeo trying another USC athlete’s sport and the other Trojan trying lacrosse. People loved it.
Opportunities kept coming. This spring DeFeo was scheduled to shoot the NFL combine. Her pinned tweet shows her with Quavo from Migos and Snoop Dogg. But her brand hasn’t changed much. At its heart, DeFeo is still just telling stories about her friends. Now, she is telling stories with the PLL’s new Unleashed WLAX, a brand that aims to amplify the stories and voices of women’s lacrosse.
“I think the second day we spent together I was already up on her social media,” McMahon said. “I had a hat trick. That wasn’t for her. She was posting it for me. Katie doesn’t do things for herself. She’s so selfless. That’s what her main goal is: to help other people and show what she stands for.”
That’s her brand. Tell real stories. Hype up your friends. Let people know who your emergency contact is. Share your life. And don’t fake it.
“Keep it very authentic, always,” DeFeo said. “The second you try to be something you’re not, everyone sees that. At its peak, this was me and my three best friends taking on the world together. That’s the best content you can make.”
CULT OF PERSONALITIES
Calling all YouTubers and TikTokkers, podcasters and Instagrammers — if these lacrosse players can make it there, so can you.
Mikey Diggs
Diggs first made waves through his commentary of lacrosse highlight videos on Instagram that soon entered the sport’s lexicon. The San Diego native who played at Saint Vincent College now hosts The Lacrosse Network’s “Weekly Watch,” while remaining an essential follow on Twitter.
Stelios Kroudis
The Villanova junior attackman takes his 28,000 YouTube subscribers inside the life of a Division I lacrosse player. He also worked behind the scenes with the Premier Lacrosse League media team shooting and editing videos during last summer’s PLL Championship Series in Utah.
Jesse James West
The former Montclair State attackman, who played at Sparta (N.J.) High School with Kroudis, has transitioned into the fitness and wellness space after he dropped out of college to pursue content creation full time. His YouTube channel now has more than 290,000 subscribers.
Brett Roberts
“B-Rob” got his start producing highlight reels for Boys’ Latin (Md.), a skill he continued to polish at Maryland. He’s now a senior producer for the PLL and director of photography for Paul Rabil — the king of all lacrosse content creators. PLL host RJ Kaminski and former content director Tyler Steinhardt also came from BL.
Scotty Royster
A physical education teacher in New Jersey, Royster played lacrosse at Kean University from 2015-18. He’s better known, though, for his hilarious videos on TikTok (that_lax_guy) that span all areas of the sport. “Just a happy guy,” Royster’s Twitter bio reads. “Average lax brotha.”
Kait Devir
The sophomore goalie at Boston College launched her YouTube channel in January of her freshman year to share her passions of fitness, nutrition, travel and photography. A communication and media studies major, Devir also works for BC’s student newspaper as a staff photographer. Learn more about Devir here from Kyle Devitte.