Isabella Abbott | Features Editor
Jan. 26, 2023
It’s Sunday, meaning game day. All content from last week is posted and ready to go. Work is seemingly done at the moment. But the work week has just started over for Veronica Behonick, a Duquesne University alum and current social media supervisor for the New England Patriots.
Behonick’s day-to-day schedule can involve anything from managing social media accounts to mapping out different content for new posts. But what her audiences don’t see is how she dedicates her day to following trends and events happening on different media platforms.
“As professionals, we monitor what’s going on in the world,” Behonick said. “Understanding what the temperature is on social media and in the public eye. As members who oversee the posting of content, it really falls on us to be the eyes and ears of listening to what the internet is saying that particular day.”
She didn’t learn this all overnight.
Behonick had many different internships and job opportunities, working for teams such as the Pittsburgh Penguins, Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators and Florida Panthers, all of which led to her current opportunity with the Patriots. Some of these positions even afforded her the chance to work for championship-caliber teams.
She hit the internship jackpot while at Duquesne, landing a gig with the Penguins. She got to work with the team during their Stanley Cup victory in 2016.
“I don’t think anybody had a better senior year of college than I did,” Behonick said. “I mean, you just can’t top that. It’s as good as it gets.”
A year later, she was working for the Nashville Predators. That season, Nashville made it to the Stanley Cup Final, where they took on none other than the Penguins.
“That was an interesting experience I will never forget, because it was a new team playing a team that [I] just came from,” Behonick said.
Although Behonick started her career in a sports-centric city like Pittsburgh — one of the reasons why she chose Duquesne in the first place — when the opportunity arose for her to work for the Patriots, she decided to move back to her home state of Massachusetts.
She said her favorite part so far is being the connector between the public and fans to the sports team that they love.
“I think the relationship between fans, organizations and teams is so special,” Behonick said. “I think the most-human thing ever is to love something so much that you cheer for them every Sunday, and the beautiful thing about the NFL is it’s something that happens in 16 different cities across the country every Sunday.
“It’s just so fun to help be the vehicle, to get the message to them or to connect them with the team.”
As well as loving fans’ enthusiasm, Behonick also enjoys witnessing the thrill that arrives each and every game day.
“The electricity in the air on game day is unmatched,” she said. “I think part of the reason why we and I love sports so much is that it’s so unifying, and there’s really no rhyme or reason to it.”
Behonick is still grateful for everything she learned while studying at Duquesne until 2016.
“I had a lot of great professors there that helped me develop the more-technical skills – sharpen[ing] your AP writing and learning how to condense things when you’re writing specific copy,” Behonick said, “and I give them credit because it helped me a lot.
“I’ll be forever grateful to Duquesne because they opened the door for me to do so many things that have allowed me to grow, and have put me on the path to what I’m doing now,” Behonick said.
She advises anyone looking to break into the world of sports after college to continue networking.
“Take every opportunity you can,” Behonick said. “Network with alumni or reach out to people whose job you think is really cool or who’s in a position that maybe someday you want to be in, and just learn about their path to get there.
“I think it’s just priceless to learn and talk about those things, because we were all right there. But just keep putting yourself out there and keep working. It’s going to work out.”