Serving socials: Partnering with coach Casey
Those keeping up with Utah State University Men’s Tennis on Instagram might’ve done a double take seeing some of their recent reels rack up thousands, even millions, of views.
The secret behind the success is the team’s recent collaboration with @tenniscoachconorcasey, a social media influencer known for blending tennis education with comedy on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. With over 86,000 Instagram followers, Casey teamed up with the USU team to create a series of lighthearted, college tennis-themed reels.
Casey isn’t a coach at USU. He doesn’t live in Logan either. Currently residing in Toronto, Casey flew out for a weekend a couple of months ago to film content with the tennis team.
The collab may seem out of the ordinary, considering the usual visibility the team gets on social media, but for head coach Aaron Paajanen, it all started in Los Angeles.
Paajanen and Casey met in 2012 while coaching youth tennis at a summer camp in Marina del Rey. Casey was acting and writing at the time and using tennis coaching to supplement his income. The two hit it off and quickly became great friends.
“Aaron and I started making comedy skits that involved the kids,” Casey said. “We found that as soon as we included the kids in the videos, they would behave.”
What started as something done to “kill time,” Paajanen said, turned into motivation for those kids. Fast forward to fall 2024, the two messaged back and forth, joking about making those funny tennis videos again, but this time with Paajanen’s college tennis team.
“At first I wasn’t really sure about it,” Paajanen said. “The more conversations we had, the more sense it made.”
Deciding to give it a try, Casey flew out from Toronto to Logan and spent a weekend filming content with the Aggies. After exploring campus and even attending an Aggie football game, Casey was off back to Toronto. Over the last few months, the content they filmed together has been slowly released.
“It’s been awesome for the guys,” Paajanen said. “He gives them exposure.”
This surge in exposure for Aggie tennis has attracted aspiring tennis players eager to join the team while also boosting the players’ social media followings. Some team members have even landed NIL deals, turning their success online into real opportunities.
Although plenty of online coaches and sports media influencers dot the internet, he brings something a lot of them don’t to the table, Casey said: “Balancing that educational factor with the comedy factor.”
Those two things have created a successful channel for Casey, so much so that the USU players were approached at a tournament in Arizona a few weeks ago by people who had seen their videos on social media.
“Whether they realize it or not, people in their community know who they are,” Paajanen said. “And now, that community’s grown a little bit because of social media.”
Besides the exposure, Paajanen said creating videos of this nature helped to bond the team together, unifying them while also providing an avenue for them to be funny around each other for the sake of a video.
“Tennis is such an individual sport,” Casey said. “You get this amplified feeling of loneliness.”
Casey continued, saying it’s important to help players feel where they belong on the team and amongst each other.
Though Casey’s online presence may be outwardly comedic, his persona goes beyond the jokes.
“I want to be the coach I needed when I was struggling,” Casey said.
“Military coaching” is often seen as the best way to run a team nowadays, Casey said, but promising comedy evokes greater emotion and trust out of the players. His ultimate goal is to make the players feel seen and heard.
“It’s incredible that a guy that doesn’t know these eight players, within a few minutes, just everybody’s just hysterically laughing,” Paajanen said on Casey’s relationship with the players during filming.
The hype these videos have created is something Casey and Paajanen would like to continue, with talk of having Casey fly out again sometime this fall.
With the world of college tennis influencers being relatively small, there’s plenty of room to grow in this niche field.
“We’re blowing up the college world,” Casey said. “College tennis is where the energy is at in our sport. On a global nature, tennis gets this rap of being this individualistic global sport, but the whole world comes to America to play college tennis.”
Although Casey does some other social media content with other tennis teams, he made it very clear Utah State was his “O.G. team” and his favorite to work with, saying he loved the “vibe” in Logan and considers Paajanen to be one of his best friends.
Tapping into this market leaves athletes like the USU Men’s Tennis team feeling the positive effects of Casey’s comedic work. These effects are showcasing to viewers what the world of tennis is actually like: competitive, challenging and of course, fun.