Katie Colbridge Ganzelli has always bled cherry and white. The 2016 sport and recreation management and media studies and production alumna is a third-generation Owl who attended Temple football and basketball games while growing up.
“As a little kid, that was the team that I followed,” Ganzelli said. “I would come to the football and basketball games, especially when I started playing sports. I really started following the Owls at a young age and really being a part of it.”
Ganzelli was promoted to marketing coordinator for on-campus initiatives in May, turning her passion for the sporting atmosphere into a career; the new role includes promoting Temple Athletics’ events to improve student turnout. Ganzelli utilizes her experience as a student in the Cherry Crusade, an organization that works alongside the department to promote sporting events, to create marketing tactics that appeal to students.
“I have always loved seeing how creative the Cherry Crusade got with their signs, whatever was happening with the game, or who we were playing,” Ganzelli said. “The creativity definitely is something fun to watch.”
Student attendance at sporting events has declined since Temple Football won the American Athletic Conference championship in 2016. Temple only filled 20 percent of Lincoln Financial Field against the University of Massachusetts on Sept. 24, with more than 14,000 people in attendance, a far cry from the roughly 27,000 average attendance for Temple games in 2016.
“I saw the crazy fans all painted up and I wanted to be a part of that atmosphere,” Ganzelli said. “During my freshman year, I looked into the Cherry Crusade and I was fortunate that the advisor was very involved with the students in the Cherry Crusade, which is a part of the marketing department.”
Ganzelli assisted with creating themes and giveaways with the marketing department as a freshman. One year of experience turned into an internship opportunity with the recruiting department for Temple football during her sophomore year.
Ganzelli earned a master’s degree from Temple in sport business with a concentration in athletic administration in 2019 while interning in the marketing department and the media and communications department. She served as administrative assistant to the chief of staff at Temple Athletics before being promoted in April 2022.
“She has an incredible work ethic,” said Arthur Johnson, Temple’s vice president and director of athletics. “She is a people person with a great attitude who shows up and does the work and is loyal to selling the program and hanging in there, even when you are not having the success that you want.”
Ganzelli was promoted because of her social marketing efforts, which included establishing and maintaining the Temple Athletics’ TikTok account. She also marketed the Under Armor flash sale on Sept. 23, 2021, that led to hundreds of students flooding the Liacouras Center’s lobby for discounted Temple merchandise.
When Temple Athletics hosted a bingo night watch party on Sept. 2, many students had never watched a football game or knew who the starting quarterback was, but Ganzelli enjoyed making connections with the students, she said.
Ganzelli also strives to spread the word about upcoming games by posting on social media, handing out flyers on campus and implementing special giveaways at select games.
“She has the willingness to get out there to promote our games on campus,” said Scott Walcoff, Temple Athletics’ senior associate athletic director and external operations. “Whether it is taking a couple hundred flyers to hand out to kids on campus and really engage with them, working with the digital teams to have digital advertisements online and in residence halls, working with student organizations.”
Ganzelli is looking forward to the new era of Temple Athletics, which includes recently-hired head coaches, a new athletic director and a new president of the university.
“I like building those kinds of relationships and if students are coming now, once they graduate, they’re more likely to come back as alumni,” Ganzelli said. “I think it is going to be better than it has ever been.”
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