“Sink or swim” was the mantra when Marist women’s lacrosse attack Maddie Schrader interned at Barstool Sports. She felt the pressure, yet came out of it succeeding and swimming like no other.
The future is bright for the Marist senior and TikTok influencer, whose TikTok following just keeps on growing. Schrader began an internship with Barstool Sports with a little over 50 thousand followers on TikTok, where she is popularly known by her handle, “m00bie.”
Now, she has amassed over 130 thousand followers while surpassing over 10 million likes. After spending a successful summer interning for Barstool Sports in Manhattan, Schrader accepted a full-time offer to work for them. Schrader has taken this opportunity she created for herself and ran with it.
She began her internship with little to no expectations and left with a newfound appreciation for Marist and the skills that she has learned from being a student-athlete at the college. Without the skills Schrader learned at Marist, she feels her internship would not have been nearly as successful.
“My mindset going into Barstool was; be nice to everyone, stay disciplined, do your job and that directly relates to being an athlete.”
Schrader transferred the discipline and dedication of waking up for rigorous 6 a.m. practices on the hot turf while also attending classes into her work life. She confronted new challenges, such as taking the train every day to commute into the city for work from Princeton, New Jersey, and she applied the strict principles of being a student-athlete to her new role of working for Barstool Sports.
“Being a division one athlete has taught me way more than I could imagine and being able to bring those disciplines to my experiences at Barstool,” said Schrader.
Schrader did identify some positives from her commute to work.
“I’ll complain about the train all I want, but it did give me the time to show gratitude and write down my goals and manifestation from the very first to last day of internship, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.”
Schrader’s creative attributes allowed her to thrive in her new setting. If she wasn’t producing content for her own TikTok account, she found herself creating content for accounts affiliated with Barstool, or getting the opportunity to collaborate with other up-and-coming TikTokers such as Kate Mackz.
In collaborating with Mackz, Schrader went on a run around the city with the creator and discussed her experience at Barstool and her rise to fame. Collaborating with other creators gave Schrader the opportunity to reach more viewers in hopes of gaining followers.
Even when her summer internship began to wind down, Schrader felt she was just getting started. After the conclusion of her internship, she partnered with Barstool and within two weeks, designs were created for her own merchandise.
The merchandise created represents Schrader’s brand and her common phrases featured all over her TikTok page. The products sold on Barstool Sports’ website feature the sayings “See ya Peets,” “Its caesar salit o’clock somewhere” and “Jim.” The phrase “Jim,” which really started it all for Schrader, came from being at practices with her teammates.
“Jim started a joke between me and my teammates, just calling everyone and everything a Jim to uplift our spirits if practice was especially tough one day,” said Schrader.
As a growing influencer, Schrader had a potentially life-altering decision to make: come back to school and finish her degree, or drop out and focus solely on social media and all that it has to offer.
Dropping out was never an option that Schrader considered, as she strongly desired to come back and finish what she had started at Marist. Her appreciation for the college made it a place she could not easily walk away from.
“I owe so much to this college; I owe to the commitment I made as a little kid,” she said. “I wanted to come back and finish my degree and commitment to lacrosse.”
Entering her senior year at Marist, she finds herself ready to attack balancing academics, lacrosse, and content creation. With the captaincy still up for grabs, Schrader is “excited to be a leader now as a senior, and I want to be there for my teammates and always give them my best.”
Previously, she discussed the importance of representing this balance as three separate pillars. She has no plan to alter the importance she places on academics and lacrosse, but she does find content creation to be a more viable possibility than ever before.
“Content was a pillar before, but now, it is just a bigger pillar,” said Schrader. “There is more to fill within that pillar. Now it feels real, when last spring, it was more up in the air.”
Since being back on campus, Schrader has been taking it day by day. She isn’t overly focused on the future; instead, she’s fixated on the now, which includes her final year at Marist. Although her content has shifted from intern back to student-athlete, she is not worried about the impact it could have on her following.
Her loyal followers, whom she refers to as “Jims,” make it easy not to worry about the effects of her changing content. Thus far, the “Jims” have continuously viewed her content regardless of whether it took place in the city with Barstool coworker Jack Mac, or in Poughkeepsie with her teammates after practice at Tenney Stadium.
Schrader describes Marist as a “content playground” conducive to her mindset. For her, it’s all about “existing and recording it” and the belief that “playing lacrosse and making content can coincide.” Such a mindset helps her manage time efficiently while also continuing to grow her brand.
The up-and-coming influencer always has her gears turning on how she can continue to heighten her following on a daily basis, and ultimately, make her dreams become a reality.
“[Barstool is] not a place you stay forever, it’s a place you grow, it’s a rocket ship, so I’m excited to be on that rocket ship and grow,” she said. “I don’t know where it’s going to land, but I’m excited to find out.”
When Schrader hangs up her cleats and says goodbye to Poughkeepsie, she will hope to continue her ascent off of the field.
Edited by Luke Sassa, Ben Leeds and Cara Lacey
Graphic by Cara Lacey; Photo Credit: Marist Athletics