Alumni: St. Joe’s, PH baseball vets mean business

FROM PAGE 1 competitive college baseball, basketball, or football.”

One connection Mokanos made through the St. Joeʼs baseball team is Justyn-Henry Malloy, a 2018 graduate who was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, and is playing for the Toledo Mud Hens, a TripleA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. While working with Elevate Sports Media, Malloy was able to get verified on Instagram and attain sponsorships with Rise Brewing Com- pany, Mizuno Baseball, and LV Lumber Bats, an organization that donates nearly a quarter of its profits to fighting pediatric cancer.

“I thought this could be a really good network for me to tap into once I was done playing,” added Mokanos, “since there are a lot of great athletes here, a lot of great people in the county and at St. Joeʼs.”

Mokanos, 22, from Hillsdale, who graduated from St. Joeʼs in 2019, is the companyʼs CEO. He got to know his business partners when the Green Knights played Pascack Hills in baseball.

“I played Mark and Paul in high school twice and they beat us once and then we beat them. There were always just high levels of competition and really great talent across the board,” he said.

Hernandez won the Group II state baseball championship in 2018 and 2019, and Sullivan was on that team for just 2018 before graduating. That 2018 team went 30-2 overall, and were League Champions and Bergen County

Champions in addition to winning that Group II state title.

Business leverages passions

Sullivan, 23, from Montvale, graduated Hills in 2018 and is chief operating officer. Hernandez, 22, from Montvale, graduated Hills in 2019 and is director of marketing, and coordinates name, image, and likeness rules.

“We know that athletes are not just the sport they play and what they do on the field, but are so much more,” Hernandez tells Pascack Press. “We do our best to bring out our athletesʼ passions and beliefs and have them work with brands that fit their personal vision and lifestyle.”

Since founding Elevate Sports Media, Mokanos graduated from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, N.Y. with a bachelorʼs degree in business administration. He was the captain of their Division-III baseball team, the Golden Knights.

Aside from his work at Elevate, Mokanos works as a sales associate with Leasing Resources Incorporated, and as a part time baseball coach at Wow Factor Baseball.

“We still have to find ways to get consistent revenue in the business,” he said, “but I would like to be heavily involved in the college space and working with professional athletes consistently in the next five to 10 years.”

Mokanos said he believes many of the connections he is making will be useful in the future. Aside from the companyʼs financials, their brand has a large following on social media from baseball fans, travel teams, and other athletes.

Their Instagram, elevatemediasports, has more than 3,000 followers, and the company has also had multiple viral TikToks highlighting some of their most prominent prospects, such as Joshua Kuroda-Grauer, a Division-I baseball player at Rutgers, and Devin Ortiz, a St. Joeʼs grad in the San Diego Padres organization.

“Some of my partners and I would like to be certified agents through the MLBPA, and we would like to be at the MLB draft and at places where we can truly network with more executives and more athletes,” Mokanos told us.

He said “Right now itʼs just not feasible, but thatʼs OK, itʼs going to take a long time and Iʼm not sure where Elevateʼs going to end up, but that would be my goal: to get certified and just have some more consistent money coming in.”

For now, Mokanos and his business partners plan to continue recruiting the next generation of professional athletes.

Although their company is relatively small, they said they believe this allows them to work more closely with their players and craft more specific plans to highlight their athleteʼs abilities and interests.

—Freelance journalist Patrick Breen of Hillsdale graduated St. Joseph Regional High School with a 4.0 GPA in 2018. A graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill, he is editor-in-chief of his music interview podcast “Pop Culture Nerd,” with listeners in 16 countries.