For more than three decades, the relationship between Carolina athletics and Nike has been one of the most recognizable in college sports. Men’s lacrosse letterman Ryan Macri learned about the significance of Nike during the first practice of his freshman year of high school.

“When I was in high school in Massachusetts, [another brand] came out with their ‘Click, Clack’ commercial, and I thought that was so cool – I could have the ‘click clack’ on my metal studs coming onto the field,” Macri recalled. “My freshman year, I had my new pair of cleats from that other brand, and I was so excited. My first day of practice, the senior captain came over to me, took my brand-new pair of cleats that I had just worn, threw them in the trash, and gave me his backup pair of Nike cleats.”

“He told me, ‘Here, we only wear Nike.’ That was my first realization of how Nike was a symbol of excellence and the pursuit of being great, and that’s something that always stuck with me. The same is obviously true at Carolina.”

Now Director of Men’s Digital Marketing at Nike, Macri’s journey at the most valuable brand in sports business actually began during the summer of 2018, when he was selected as one of two summer interns from the Carolina athletic department.

COMPETITIVE DRIVE

As part of Carolina’s athletic department contract with Nike, each summer during the term of the agreement, Nike funds two paid summer internships open to any Tar Heel student athlete, based at Nike’s world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. As you might imagine, with nearly 800 student athletes on campus, it’s an extremely competitive process to be selected for the internship. For Macri, it took several years of applying before he was able to get the chance to intern at Nike.

“I was a rising sophomore and wanted to go for the internship. I had always had the dream of working for Nike.” said Macri, who majored in business administration at Carolina. “The first year, I didn’t get it, but one of my friends [former UNC track and field athlete] Chris Madaffari got it instead. I went off, did another internship instead, and came back the next year as a rising junior and applied for the internship a second time, and Chris got it again.”

“I was pretty sad, because that felt like my last shot,” he recalled. “But I had my redshirt year. I took that fall off from Carolina, working at an ed-tech firm, came back for that lacrosse season, and applied as a graduating redshirt senior for the internship one more time. I had a job lined up elsewhere already but was able to push that start date back because I wanted to try one final time for the Nike internship. I was finally able to get into the internship and absolutely loved it, and I’ve been here ever since.”

As could probably be expected, the application process is extremely competitive.

“Everything in the process was visual,” Macri said. “It was about storytelling through everything that you do, and that became very clear on the interview questions of ‘Why sport?’ and ‘Why Nike?’ You hear other people who go through that process, and their answers are, “Oh, I’ve always loved sports. I thought it would be cool,’ and then there’s answers that go back to your childhood and the first pair of Nikes that you wore and how you string that through your entire interview. The storytelling aspect, I think, throughout the internship process and the application, was unlike any other interview or job that I’ve applied for in the past.”

Inevitably, not every qualified student-athlete will be able to take part in the Nike internship through the athletic department.

Now Nike’s Global Football Brand Lead and a 2023 Forbes “30 Under 30” recipient for her work surrounding the 2023 Women’s World Cup, women’s soccer alumnae Darcy McFarlane wasn’t selected as an athletic department intern and had to take a different route to Oregon, through a brief stopover in another Fortune 100 company in the Pacific Northwest: Microsoft.

“I was bummed when I didn’t get the Nike internship, but it’s so easy to say, looking back now, that getting the internship at Microsoft was one of the better things that could have happened to me,” McFarlane said. “I learned a ton about marketing, and it was definitely interesting to learn about marketing when you’re marketing things that you’re not necessarily passionate about. It checked so many boxes for me, but I always wondered what it would be like to market something that I’m passionate and excited about. For me, that’s always been sports.”

“I feel like we don’t know a lot of people in a relationship who do the exact same thing, but I think it’s been really positive and we’re really supportive of each other,” McFarlane added. “Coming home at the end of the day, we sometimes have to set some boundaries and not talk about work because we could just talk about it all the time. Being able to talk with someone who’s a little bit coming from the outside because they come from a different part of the company, but who has experiences that can help me solve that problem, I think it makes us both better at our jobs.”

MAKING AN IMPACT

Both Tar Heel athletes have made strong impacts in their respective areas during their time at Nike. One of McFarlane’s first projects at Nike was actually inspired by her work at Microsoft.

“One of our missions at Nike is to provide innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world. We believe and say, ‘If you have a body, you’re an athlete,’” she said. “In our Nike Training Club app, I noticed that we had a lot of workouts, but they were all for able-bodied people. We didn’t have anything for people with any sort of disability. I was inspired a lot by my time at Microsoft and how much emphasis they put on accessibility and inclusion.

“I worked with one of our sports marketing leads, a Paralympian herself, to accelerate the signing of an adaptive CrossFit athlete, and then worked with that athlete to create adaptive workouts in partnership with an adaptive physical therapist. We were able to create seven workouts in the app that were both for people who are able-bodied, but also had modifications for people with disabilities. I’m very proud of that, as well as more recently leading the marketing launch of the Phantom Luna, Nike’s most researched and innovative women’s led boot. We led with some of our top women’s players in the marketing content including my former UNC teammate, Crystal Dunn, and my own ACL scars even got a little cameo in the marketing video. It was a meaningful project that really came full circle for me as a player and marketer.”

Heavily involved with Nike’s American Football brand, Macri’s career highlights include working on a brand plan for Saquon Barkley, designing the shirt that Joe Burrow wore on NFL Draft night, and partnering with EA Sports and Madden on a partnership between the Nike Run Club app and Madden, centering around the Rams’ Aaron Donald.

“I think my favorite memory throughout that project was creating a ‘player edition’ version of the Nike Air Trainer that would have Saquon’s logo on it. We launched his logo, and then we finally got aligned with big corporate Nike that we were going to create a shoe for him. I went to Saquon’s house and we worked in his basement with a designer, a product manager, talking about the inspiration of what he wanted for his shoe to look like. To see that come to life nine months later, create the marketing campaign behind it, and then wearing the shoes myself a few days ago and having people ask me, ‘What shoes are those? Those are amazing!’ and get to tell them, ‘Oh, yeah, I designed them at Saquon’s house.’ I think it was one of the most fun kind of projects, and one of those ‘Nike-only’ stories that you get.”

THE CAROLINA FAMILY

With more than 3,700 miles between Beaverton, Oregon and Chapel Hill, it might seem unlikely to have a strong alumni base on the West Coast, but thanks in part to the athletic department internships and connection between Nike and UNC, that’s not the case. In fact, there are multiple buildings on the Nike campus – the Jordan building and the Mia Hamm building – named for former Tar Heels. The café in the latter is even named the “Tar Heel Café.”

“There’s quite a big representation of former student-athletes, but there’s also plenty of UNC alumni who are at Nike now. There’s a group of us that get together for Carolina basketball games, which is always really fun,” McFarlane said. “Even athletes and students we weren’t necessarily super close with at Carolina, the UNC connection at Nike definitely bonds us. We all share this love of sport, and I think all just share this love of UNC. People who went to other schools don’t love their school the way we love Carolina.”

“If there are ever two Tar Heels on a call, the beginning of the conversation always starts with some conversation of UNC,” Macri added. “Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of Duke grads, so there is always some fun, heated banter. I don’t think you hear of any other schools on those calls of people rallying behind their school as much as they would at UNC.”

MAKING SPORT A DAILY HABIT (EVEN ON THEIR WEDDING DAY!)

As Macri and McFarlane prepare for their upcoming wedding, they liken the planning process to implementing a marketing plan for a Nike product launch.

“We joke that planning a wedding is not all that different than what we do for our jobs, planning a marketing campaign, it just happens to be that we’re the people that it’s about,” McFarlane said. “In terms of the things you have to do, it’s not that hard, it just takes time, I think, and it’s a special moment and there are definitely a lot of moving pieces involved, so we’re managing it all, but we’re excited for the actual day to come in August.”

In keeping with Nike’s mantras of “If you have a body, you’re an athlete,” and “Make sport a daily habit,” the former student-athletes and soon-to-be- newlyweds have a Nike-inspired surprise for their attending loved ones.

“Our guests will either hate us or love us for this, but we’ve planned a pre-wedding run at 7:30 a.m. the day of our wedding,” McFarlane laughed. “Running and working out is something we’ve always loved to do together, so hopefully everyone will enjoy taking in the whole day full of activities with us!”