Cristina Stefanizzi, former executive editor of the Pelham Examiner, was recently featured in an article in The Observer, Fordham University’s student newspaper. The article chronicles the success that Stefanizzi and her colleagues have had at Fordham Athletics’ Creative Media Department. Stefanizzi graduated from Pelham Memorial High School in 2023.

According to the Observer, Stefanizzi–who served as social media director for Fordham’s football team this fall–made an impact last August by uploading an Instagram Reel and TikTok in which she gave the Fordham football players a gold star after one of their training camp practices. Within weeks, the video racked up 39,600 views on Instagram and 2.3 million views on TikTok with over 527,000 likes, according to the article.

“The gold star TikToks came to me out of the blue, I just had a lot of extra stickers,” Stefanizzi told the Observer. “I remembered how gratifying it was to get a sticker in elementary school, so I thought it would be cute to give to the players as they left practice. I’m really glad it’s getting a lot of traction online, I’ve seen a couple other teams try and do it too, which is kind of crazy.”