Nico Leonard is a senior Communication & Media major at Utica University who juggles a variety of interests and responsibilities as an undergraduate student. Those include working at UticaTV, playing middle defense on the men’s soccer team and running his own photography company NMLCreativeMedia. 

Leonard’s triple threat of activities has led to long lasting memories that he said he can never take for granted.

When it comes to working for UticaTV, Leonard remembers how he got into the idea of being a part of the program. He learned about UticaTV when he took Professor Laura Lewin’s Television Story Production class. 

“She asked me after sometime if TV production was something that I would want to pursue in life and it was definitely something that I was thinking about,” Leonard said. “So she asked me to come work at UticaTV and work up the ranks.”

Lewin, a Communication and Media professor and UticaTV’s advisor, said Leonard stood out in that class and was able to expand his skills in and out of the studio. He enhanced the workload at UticaTV and also heightened his video editing and leadership abilities. 

“He can now run the studio without needing assistance,” Lewin said. “His editing is [also] getting cleaner and quicker.”

Working at UticaTV was something that came naturally to Leonard because of his past interests in multimedia production, such as video editing. The internship that Leonard was involved with the summer before his junior year may have had something to do with that.

“I started editing stuff for an internship and that’s what I liked to do,” Leonard said. “All the things I learned in Adobe Premiere were learned my way and not the shortcut way. I wanted to continue to learn new things and immerse myself while I was here for that reason.” 

Leonard said when it comes to photography, he finds himself enjoying both the physical action of taking pictures as well as the process of editing that comes afterwards. He appreciated the difficulties that come with live shooting sporting events such as basketball while also learning how to attack the editing process that comes with it.

“I learn something new every time I shoot and every time that I edit,” Leonard said. “I think that they are both the same process. When I go to shoot, it requires editing. It all really goes hand in hand.”

Leonard wanted to continue to learn as a photographer because he believed that the ability to build connections with people in the world of photography is one that he can use later on in life when it comes to a future career. 

“ I want to use this camera more and more and I have developed an extreme passion for it,” Leonard said. “I have an extreme passion for these pictures, and ultimately I think that stems from being a college athlete myself. At the end of the day, what college athlete doesn’t love to get photos of themselves playing their favorite sport? I want to share that feeling with those who also love their sports.”

While Leonard is a multimedia fanatic, he also is a collegiate athlete for the Men’s soccer team and has been since his sophomore year when he transferred to Utica. Soccer is one of Leonard’s favorite things to do and it has been since he was around 3 years old. 

“I started playing in a rec program, but if you were a kindergartener at [my elementary school] Scotland, you played for your school,” Leonard said. “Co-ed rec soccer in elementary school as a second grader, that was pretty awesome. I played indoor soccer as well.”

Leonard wanted to play soccer as his father was also a soccer player who spent time playing at the University of Central Florida. He had even played soccer with multiple legends of the United States soccer world.

“He coached me up until 6th or 7th grade and he even did guest sessions with academy teams. It got to a point then where I said I’m going to college for this,” Leonard said.

Leonard was thankful for his time that he spent at Utica in the soccer program. Some of his favorite memories in his entire soccer career were born from this group of guys. 

“Every single second with my core group of seniors and grad students here at Utica,” Leonard said. “Everyone in my grade, my roommate in the grade below me and the grad students. The core group and all of the wonderful memories we made were my favorite.”

Some of these students that Leonard played with included Brady Barnard, also a senior. Bernard said his favorite part about playing with Leonard was because they had the same ideas on the field, which made playing with him enjoyable.

 “Ever since Nico came to Utica he showed qualities of being a leader. He was always someone who would step up to lead the warmups, or someone who wouldn’t hesitate to express the team’s thoughts to the coach,” Bernard said. “ On the field he would never be negative towards a teammate, all of his comments were constructive and motivating. One of his best qualities on and off the field is his ability to keep his teammates heads up.

Oct. 30 was Leonard’s last game of his collegiate career. The Utica Pioneers defeated Keuka College 3-1, and when asked about whether or not Leonard would look to continue playing soccer after his collegiate career was over, he laughed.

“I’ll definitely end up playing at some point,” Leonard said. “The major shift is that after (the last game) it’ll go from being my main priority to just a hobby which is actually crazy to think about,” he said. “I’ll think about it, but it’s just a sport now, but if my future career allows me to play soccer competitively again then I may do it, but for now my career comes first and I’m excited for that.”