Violet Alao: The face behind Lehigh football’s TikTok

During the weekly farmers market in Farrington Square, football players hand out shirts and interview students with miniature microphones. 

Behind the camera, Violet Alao is the one making it all happen. 

A senior at Syracuse University completing her capstone internship, Alao has spent the past two months transforming Lehigh football’s TikTok presence.

She’s built the team’s account from scratch, amassing more than 1.1 million views, over 1,300 followers and more than 108,000 total likes.

Alao grew up in Hawaii but moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania for her junior and senior years of high school. Now, a few years later, she chose to have her internship at Lehigh to be closer to her family. 

She then reached out to Kelly Rohrer, Lehigh Athletic’s associate director of communications for multimedia services, to complete her capstone internship through the fall semester.

“I love social media,” Alao said. “When I was given this task, I was not overwhelmed. I knew exactly what I needed to do.” 

She attends nearly every Lehigh sports game, manages access to the teams’ Instagram accounts and creates pregame content to upload throughout each event. 

Alao said while the NFL and larger universities have major followings for their sports accounts, she saw this as a chance to help a smaller program like Lehigh stand out. 

When she first arrived to campus, Alao said she wasn’t used to the culture around Lehigh sports, with fewer students attending the events and games being held outside on a grass field. She said she thought this was unusual, especially with Lehigh being ranked a top 10 school in the FCS coaches poll. 

Alao saw the lack of support and made a goal for herself to build the football players’ morale while expanding the student section by promoting the team’s success through social media. 

Now that she’s achieved her goal and the TikTok account has gained traction, she said her next focus is seeing what numbers it can hit. 

Alao said game day videos consistently perform the best. In September, her posts reached 1.1 million total video views, earned 111,000 likes and 2,400 shares, with several videos surpassing half a million views.

Sophomore defensive back Ignatious Williams said it’s fun to take part in interviews, especially during the team’s Thursday pep rallies in Farrington Square when they hand out schedules and T-shirts while interacting with students at the farmers market. 

One of Alao’s most consistent sources of content comes from those pep rallies. 

She said the footage was initially used on the Lehigh Sports and Lehigh Football Instagram accounts, but when she posted it on TikTok, the videos drew a combined 20,000 views and more than 200 shares.

Alao said that interaction creates viewership and support from other students on campus.

Williams, who also works as a photographer for Lehigh Athletics, said he understands being on both sides of the camera.

“You don’t realize how much hard work (Lehigh Athletics) does,” Williams said. “Once you actually do it, you realize and appreciate them a little more.” 

Williams said more students are coming to football games thanks to the team’s growing social media presence and Clutch’s Kettle, the newly established student section.

He also said Alao is easy to work with and makes creating TikToks fun for the community. 

Sophomore running back Aaron Crossley said he enjoys making videos and educating students on campus about the football program. 

“I’m just trying to educate them more and ask some funny questions,” Crossley said. “See if you could make their day a little better and post it and see if you can make someone who is watching a bit better.” 

Crossley said team promotion usually happens on X and Instagram for alumni, but TikTok is helping the younger fan base grow.

Alao said being a college student herself helps her understand the target audience by creating content in line with current social media trends. 

“The ‘mini mic’ question we asked last time was, ‘Who is your dream Dancing with the Stars partner?’” Alao said. “The older generation is not going to get that.” 

Alao said she also aims to engage not only football fans — often assumed to be a male demographic — but female students as well by creating content she thinks they would enjoy. 

“Everything happens for a reason, and I am really glad to be here and have this opportunity, “ Alao said.