The potent energy once displayed on the basketball court is now reaching audiences in a different form.
Instead of blocking shots or grabbing rebounds, Adam Constantine ’10 is filling Twitter and Instagram feeds.
The former Elon University basketball player has shed his jersey and sneakers but kept his massive beard for Facebook likes and Twitter retweets in his new role as Elon’s social media manager.
It’s a fitting task for the former center, who played professionally in Finland, Ukraine, Germany, Israel and Turkey for four years and who has what friends describe as a loud, outgoing and enthusiastic personality.
He’s excited to be back at his alma mater, too.
“You walk onto campus and feel how alive Elon is,” Constantine said. “I want that same feel to be shown on social media.”
Different day, different media
Constantine was involved in a number of student media organizations as an undergraduate, serving as an account executive for Live Oak Communications, a film critic for The Pendulum and an NBA analyst for One on One Sports.
He excelled in Janna Anderson’s “Media Writing” class during his sophomore year, where his performance on an assignment covering Bill Clinton’s speech still stands out to the professor of communications. The professor of communications had him come back and speak to her classes after he completed the course.
“When he was in my media writing class, he learned about all the different aspects of communications,” Anderson said. “He pretty much decided to do them all. Some people would say, ‘I’m going to do one.’ He went after everything.”
But he said he truly fell in love with social media while playing basketball overseas.
Prominent social media sites such as Twitter were just gaining popularity when Constantine graduated from Elon. When he left his family and friends to pursue his childhood dream of playing basketball, it was one of the ways he stayed in touch with them.
“Yes, I love playing basketball, I love being part of a community that gets to play professional basketball,” he said. “But I’m away from my family and friends for eight months. Social media, I found, was the best outlet to still reach my family, my friends and the fans I made in different countries as I moved around.”
Constantine left Finland last year after an injury sidelined him, and he took a job as the social media manager for Live Work Play, a digital marketing firm in downtown Raleigh. After a few months there, he interviewed at Elon and began working here in March.
He’s in charge of running Elon’s social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn in addition to pioneering new ways for different departments and organizations to use social media across campus.
“That’s one of the things I like about the job, the day-to-day isn’t the same,” Constantine said. “The one thing that is the same is content population. We kind of sit down and say, ‘OK, what is happening at Elon that is important today, tomorrow, this weekend, map that out and ask how do we want to cover that?’”
So there’s no need to look twice when you see his 6-foot-10 frame walking around campus carrying a stuffed Phoenix or a stuffed squirrel for an Instagram photo.
“We don’t post just to post,” he said. “We want to make sure that if we do speak on behalf of the university, it is something that we want to share, and we want people to see is an important facet of what we do here.”
A vocal presence on the court
There were some rough patches in 2009-2010, Matt Matheny’s first season as Elon’s men’s basketball coach, but part of what powered the Phoenix through it was Constantine’s presence.
It wasn’t his 12.1 points and 8.1 rebounds per game as much as it was his vocal cords.
“We knew what a challenging year that first year would be,” Matheny said. “[Constantine’s] energy became vital for us. We went through a long stretch where we didn’t win any games. His ability to stay with positive, high energy was very important.”
Constantine, a senior at that time, was seen as a leader on and off the court for the Phoenix. He was an emotional and vocal player.
“I challenge you to find a picture of me playing with my mouth closed,” he said.
Constantine earned Second Team All-Southern Conference nods, but there are other memories of Constantine that stick out to former teammates.
Chris Long, a current Elon assistant coach and former teammate of Constantine’s, described a sequence one year where Elon went into halftime losing, and then-head coach Ernie Nestor tried to rally the team in the locker room.
“Coach Nestor said something along the lines of, ‘I want players who are going to give it their all and literally drop to the floor because they had nothing left to give,’” Long said. “‘If you give everything you have to give ... and you have nothing left to give, I’ll help carry you off the court.’”
Constantine bought in.
A few possessions into the first half, he blocked two or three — Long and Constantine dispute the number — shots in a row and let out what Long described as a “primal scream” that Constantine compared to Jurassic Park.
Then, he dropped to the floor, seemingly taking his coach’s words to heart.
“I was like, ‘OK, I might’ve pushed it a little too much,’” Constantine said. “I wouldn’t say I passed out, just say I needed to take a horizontal break for an extended period of time.”
Long and some teammates still give Constantine — who was taking some theater classes then — a hard time about it, saying it was all an act.
That sequence describes the passion and enthusiasm Constantine brings each day to whatever task he’s performing.
“He’s the same way off the court. As much as he talks on the court, he talks just as much off,” Long said. “Wherever he goes, his personality goes with him. Wherever he is, he’s going to try and carry the conversation.”
Same school, new perspective
During much of the 2013-2014 basketball season, Constantine could be spotted in a courtside seat during Elon’s games in Alumni Gym.
He never sat, though. He’d be standing and cheering, bringing back memories of the days when he played.
But you won’t see that anymore with his new role.
“That was stated in the interview,” Constantine said with a laugh. “‘Now, you do understand if you get this job, you will have to make a sacrifice in the way in which you cheer enthusiastically for your teammates.’”
Now, he sits on press row sending out tweets from @elonuniversity. And that’s okay with him simply because he loves that he’s back at Elon.
“It doesn’t feel weird that I’m back and not a student,” he said. “In another sense, I almost have more of the student experience now than I did when I was here, just because of the demands of being a student-athlete. I get to go to convocation or speakers, things like that. That’s been really cool.”
Off the court, Constantine enjoys being with friends and going to movies. He’s a self-described movie buff. He went to the midnight premiere of “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” last week.
He doesn’t have a favorite social media site because they all bring something different to the table. But one consistency is the interaction — something Constantine has been carrying with his personality for years.
“The reason why I love social media so much is because it’s a catalyst to real-life interaction,” Constantine said. “It’s not ‘in lieu of’ or ‘instead of.’ It’s something that strengthens it and keeps it strong. That’s why the social media draw is so important to me.”