Liza DeCaprio ‘25 has received the Lindsay Roemmich Sport Management Achievement Award, the Department of Sport Management’s highest honor. The Roemmich Award is presented every year to the graduating senior who best exhibits academic excellence, external sport management experience, positive attitude and dedication to improving the Rice Sport Management program.
Back in September 2024, DeCaprio said that she and her friends had talked about how they really hoped it was any one of them who would win the Roemmich Award at the end of the year. When Liza found out she had won though, she said she was not expecting it.
“I was in total shock, because my class is full of amazing, amazing people,” DeCaprio said. “I remember talking to some of my friends in the program and we were like, ‘Wow, I wonder who they're gonna pick, because, in the nicest way possible, I know we made it hard for them.’”
For the past 20 years, this award has been voted on by the faculty and staff of the Department of Sport Management.
“This class is probably the best class that I've ever seen come through our department,” said Professor in the Practice Tom Stallings. “The talent in this class now, even when I was talking to them during the early decision or regular decision process, I was telling all my colleagues that this is a class full of superstars, and that prediction was accurate.”
Stallings met DeCaprio when her older brother toured Rice and she was in high school. Stallings said DeCaprio was quiet and just along for the ride with her family, but somewhere along the way he thinks DeCaprio started to get a sense that Rice might be a good school for her.
“And then when she got here, she was this mature 18-year-old that totally bought into it and just grew and really became the exceptional employee she is today for the Houston Astros,” Stallings said.
During DeCaprio’s freshman year, she took on internships with the football and baseball teams at Rice. With the football team, she filmed practices and games as a video operations intern. For baseball, she filmed intrasquad games and bullpen outings and created scouting reports of opposing teams as a Baseball Operations Analyst.
“Somewhere in that first year, she realized that what she really enjoyed was the content creation part, and she was really good at photography and building the brand,” Stallings said. “What she also realized was, of all the assignments she had with Rice Athletics, she most preferred working with the baseball team.”
That summer she worked in the team store for the Boston Red Sox. After a summer of watching a lot of baseball and networking, she came up with an idea to improve attendance at Rice baseball games. She had found out that the Rice Athletics marketing team did not have enough people on staff to have designated staffers for each sport.
DeCaprio created a PowerPoint and presented it to former Rice baseball head coach Jose Cruz Jr. explaining how and why she was qualified to run the team’s social media accounts. She said it was the easiest interview she ever had, and she was hired on the spot.
“I know that Rice baseball is one of the main reasons why I'm where I am, and that I wouldn't be there if it wasn't for my professors pushing me to just reach out to Cruz and put something together,” DeCaprio said. “It was really a group effort getting me where I am. And it's very, very humbling to see where it's gotten me.”
During her sophomore summer, she interned with the PGA of America in Frisco, Texas and then continued to work for them remotely from Houston. When she returned to Rice, she continued to shoot photos, crop and edit them to post on the Rice baseball social media accounts. She traveled with the team and created its voice online.
It was at a Rice baseball game in the spring of 2024 when the Vice President of Marketing for the Astros, Jason Wooden, saw her working and was impressed. A month after his visit, Rice alum and Astros Content Producer, Ryan Freidin, encouraged DeCaprio to apply for the Astros Social Media Apprentice role the team had just posted.
DeCaprio applied for the job and the next day the team called and hired her. She started three days later. After eight months as an apprentice, DeCaprio was hired as the full-time Social Media Coordinator for the Astros. She runs all of the team’s social media accounts, from Instagram all the way to LinkedIn.
When she found out she received the Roemmich “Hammer” award she was at work in Daikin Park.
“I remember, I looked at Ryan, because I was sitting in the office when I got the email, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, Ryan, I just won the Roemmich Award,’” DeCaprio said. “Then the whole office was like, ‘What did you win?’ It was really cool, and they were all super excited for me.”
After graduation, DeCaprio will continue in her role with Astros, but she will no longer have to worry about managing her Rice course load on top of it her full-time job.
“Liza excelled in the classroom and took advantage of everything that our department had to offer her," Clark Haptonstall, Chair of the Department of Sport Management, said. "Her future is bright and I'm excited to see how much she will accomplish during her career."
Kathleen Ortiz, a junior from Kingwood, Texas, is double-majoring in Social Policy Analysis and also Sport Management with a concentration in Sport Law.