Most people who loved sports at a young age had dreams of growing up to become a professional athlete.

As the competition becomes fiercer and young athletes develop and sharpen their skills, lines are drawn and some of those dreams are quashed by high school graduation.

Even the select few that go on to play at the collegiate level will also have to abandon the path to professional sports.

But what happens when someone is undeterred in their quest to have a career in the sports world despite not being an elite athlete?

For Zach Gayer, it has been a challenging but incredibly satisfying — and remarkably successful — journey.

Gayer, a 2011 graduate of Tabut V’Torah in Irvine, played basketball for the Lions and was a member of a CIF-SS championship team. He is currently serving as the social media manager for the Golden State Warriors.

The Warriors are making their first appearance in the NBA Finals since 2019 and Gayer will be busy creating and publishing content throughout the finals, as he has done all season long.

“It is awesome because you can feel how many eyeballs are on our feeds, really just by looking at the numbers and looking through the engagement on social media and what people are saying,” Gayer said.

“Then as you advance, (in the postseason) it all just kind of ramps up,” he continued. “One percent of NBA fans will ever really attend a game and I think trying to bring that playoff atmosphere into our social feeds so that our fans worldwide can experience it is a pretty cool challenge for us, but it allows us to try more and get more creative and really just amplify everything that we have done from the regular season to the next level.”

Gayer’s path to working for one of the premier franchises in sports was far from easy.

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he grew up a fan of the Pistons before his family relocated to Southern California when he was in the fourth grade.

After high school Gayer decided to attend Michigan and was the student manager for the men’s basketball team from 2011-2015 under former head coach John Beilein.

His plan was to pursue coaching but after noticing the potential lack of job security and a high turnover rate he decided to rethink his career choice.

“I was like, I don’t really know if that is a hundred percent for me, but right around the same time outside of basketball I was doing some things around campus that involve social media and truthfully, I did not really know what I was doing,” he said.

Gayer began to dip his toes in the water of the social media world and began writing email newsletters for a clothing company in Ann Arbor while also helping them with their social media platforms.

He noticed the impact platforms like Twitter had on the Wolverines basketball team and the athletic department. While on vacation in Israel, he was wearing a Michigan T-shirt during a pickup game and some of the local kids asked him if he knew Trey Burke.

“They had no idea I worked for the team but they knew the names (of the players) and they knew it from following on Twitter and I was like, wow, that is pretty special,” he said. “So that is kind of how I started kind of shifting my career choice and where I wanted to maybe go with.”

He credits Beilein for helping him land his first job as a production assistant for the NBA thanks to a great letter of recommendation.

Gayer then moved on to the MLS as a senior coordinator of media partnerships before the Warriors hired him in 2019.

He stresses the importance of trying different things to figure out the correct career path, even if the path isn’t as linear.

“Even if you’re not so sure about something, nothing’s forever and be willing to try stuff and if it doesn’t work out, it only teaches you something that will help push you towards a path that you want to go eventually.”

“Sports isn’t like that,” he continued. “I don’t know anybody that is on a linear path quite frankly, especially in social media as it continues to evolve and just I think everybody kind of gets to where they are supposed to get to, eventually, sports just sometimes takes a little bit more.”