The Woman Behind The Moments

Kait Devir is leading a double life.

On one hand, she's an accomplished lacrosse goalie with a national championship to her name. She made 100 career saves at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey before arriving at Boston College in 2020, and after a year-plus of weird COVID implications, she saw her first minutes for Boston College last year as part of her second season. She played in two NCAA Tournament games over the first weekend against Fairfield and Temple, and her first collegiate save came in her team's 19-6 win over the Stags. Two weeks later, she was on the Towson University field celebrating with a trophy and a national championship.

On the other hand, she's more than just an athlete. She's the woman behind the moments captured forever on camera and a photographer for several sports at BC. She captured Trae Barry's touchdown catch last Saturday against Colgate, and she finds the stories worth the thousand words of a still picture. This past summer, she was the official photographer for Athletes Unlimited's professional lacrosse league, and she's a burgeoning social media star with more than 2,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel.

"I would say that coming to BC was nervous for me because there were so many unknowns," Devir said. "You're going to a new place, a new school and a new team, and it's scary because you don't know a lot about what goes on other than training and the lacrosse packet that new commits receive. There's a lot of uncertainty. So it was big for me to realize that something could be the next chapter of my life and that I really wanted to look back on it. That's when I started vlogging and living my dream, and it's (led) to where I can go back and see these amazing memories I made during my college life."

Devir always had a passion for photography, but she found herself as part of Boston College's sports media content team last year as the Eagles began working back towards playing sports. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic rearranged her fall lacrosse schedule from its usual time crunch, so she approached and worked with the photographers and videographers behind the scenes of the Eagles' social media pages.

"We didn't really have lacrosse last fall," she admitted, "so I got involved with the BC media team in order to shoot sports to fill my free time. I shot a lot of soccer and field hockey, and I just loved doing it constantly. So coming back to BC, I was able to help with media days, and I had my own station for photos. It was a really great experience, but when we were in that process, I talked to Kayla Treanor, our old assistant coach. She asked what I was doing over the summer for work."

Treanor explained how Athletes Unlimited was preparing to change women's sports at a grassroots level. It already launched a professional softball and volleyball league through the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and it planned to introduce a five-week lacrosse season on July 23. Treanor was part of the league, as was Sam Apuzzo and Dempsey Arsenault, and its unprecedented funding and player-centric model enabled fluid, fantasy-style teams playing off against one another.

"She's seen what I was doing over the previous year and how I basically covered all media content for a club lacrosse team," Devir said. "I made their videos and photos, and I posted on socials and updated their website. Kayla explained to me what Athletes Unlimited was trying to do and how it was the first legitimate pro women's lacrosse league after the Women's Professional Lacrosse League. She also told me what the CEO and members of the board were focused on doing, and I loved hearing about it."

Devir sent her content portfolio to the league, and before she could blink at what happened, the league hired her to photograph its games for its athletes. At just 19 years old, she was running the league's media day and looking for plays and action shots of lacrosse players long regarded as heroes in the sport. It was a dream come true, and it was happening weeks after she hoisted the national championship trophy with the Eagles.

"If it wasn't for the BC content team taking me, I wouldn't have had such a strong portfolio," she said. "I had a lot to show, and we started (with Athletes Unlimited) by shooting the games and the media day. I just sat there and was (astonished) that I was getting into this at 19, and I was working with people who are almost 30 years old. I'm the one directing them through media stations and setting up lights or invoicing equipment, and I'm telling people what we need to rent out lenses. It was eye-opening on how much maturity I had to have because every single time someone would walk in the room, I was starstuck."

Having her on board was a huge asset for Athletes Unlimited, and she shot the entire five-week season for the professional league. She worked off-camera with athletes to build their social media platforms and offered her services to build content brands for social media, and she absorbed everything as both a photographer and a lacrosse athlete.

She started a Fit Friday movement with the players and started a growing popular movement among the league's targets. It incorporated lacrosse but showed off their personalities, something that wasn't lost as the players started competing for space on the social media videos.

"They would show off their style," Devir said, "and it became a really big thing. The girls would get excited, and they used it to represent a sponsor or a cause that they wanted to represent. For me, it was about building their personal brands since I'm a college athlete, and I know it's really important to build a personal brand off the field in order to have an impact with who you might be socially interacting with."

It illustrated how the modern generation is revolutionizing the media game and how Boston College both encouraged and found a hidden gem among its athletic ranks. Devir's arrival in Chestnut Hill coincided with a personal YouTube channel that allowed her to interact with a wide variety of demographics. She used it to document her balance of training and diet as an athlete, but she furthered it by offering the off-field views of her social life. This past spring, it became a window into Boston College's national championship run as her subscriber base grew to over 2,000 viewers.

"I knew that our coaching staff really focused on family," she said, "but I didn't know what lift days or practice days would look like, and I wanted my channel to have that. At the same time, I'm not just an athlete, which is why there's so much other stuff. I have so much going on in my life, and I love that part.

"Nutrition and fitness are a huge part of my life," she added, "and I have a food Instagram that girls can (direct message) me on if I'm having a live session, and they can ask what they can do to eat or be faster, what drills and runs would help. I love doing the media because it's just a good feeling. I just want to document my life. I know what's unique, and I want my channels to show everything about what I can do in my life."

Players Mentioned

Kait Devir

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