Wichita’s Aliyah Funschelle bet on women’s sports. Now her career is booming
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Funschelle has built an audience of more than 200,000 followers across social media.
- She has worked with brands such as Google Pixel, Disney, DoorDash, Nike and Adidas.
- She recently landed a weekly iHeart Women’s Sports podcast, “The Match-Up with Aliyah.”
Long before women’s sports became one of the fastest-rising forces in American media, before brands started pouring money into the space and before content creators became essential to how leagues reached fans, Aliyah Funschelle saw where things were headed.
A Wichita native and 2016 Maize South High School graduate, Funschelle kept posting her own videos on social media through the low views, the skepticism and the warnings that what she was doing was not the “right” way to build a sports media career.
She believed the world of women’s sports was a sleeping giant. She believed social media storytelling could look different. And she believed there was room for someone who could blend sports, fashion and personality into something all her own.
Now, just before her 28th birthday, Funschelle has become living proof of how right she was.
That belief has turned into a career that would have sounded far-fetched to some when she first began. Funschelle has built an audience of more than 200,000 followers across social media, including more than 65,000 on Instagram and 116,000 on TikTok. She has worked with brands such as Google Pixel, Disney, DoorDash, Nike, Adidas and NBA 2K.
She recently landed a weekly podcast on iHeart Women’s Sports called “The Match-Up with Aliyah.” And earlier this month, she was part of a Plezi collaboration that led to one of the biggest moments of her career: sitting down for nearly an hour with former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Earlier this week, she was back at the WNBA Draft, filming content with women’s basketball legend Lisa Leslie while working the orange carpet and posting from one of the sport’s biggest stages.
“It’s honestly so crazy, I try not to get too jaded to it,” Funschelle said. “It’s a weird balance of trying to act normal like they’re real people because they are, but also realizing this is so crazy. You have to keep cool and calm, but it is really crazy to think about all of the people I’ve been able to meet so far through my career.”
From the outside, Funschelle’s rise might appear sudden, built on viral moments and well-timed opportunities. But the truth is that she had been preparing for this long before women’s sports exploded and long before content creation became a respected lane in sports media.
When she was coming out of Maize South and later Wichita State, Funschelle knew she loved sports and media. What she did not feel was a strong pull toward the traditional options in front of her. She liked writing but did not view herself as a newspaper writer. She liked being on camera but did not feel like a standard broadcast journalist, either.
Instead, she wanted to cover sports in a way that felt more personal and more modern. She was interested in the human side of athletes more than their stat lines. She wanted to talk about fashion, music and culture, not just the Xs and Os.
At the time, that vision was not always encouraged.
“I’ve always had a vision for how sports content could be,” she said. “Even though when I started out, a lot of people were like, ‘That’s unprofessional,’ and, ‘You’re not going to be a real journalist.’ But to be honest, I didn’t really want that. I thought journalism was awesome, but I also saw a future for what sports content would be.”
That future started to take shape during her junior year at Wichita State, where she was studying sport management. Funschelle launched “Sports with Aliyah,” a sit-down interview show she posted on YouTube.
She did everything herself. She booked studio time, lined up guests, researched, wrote questions, hosted sit-down interviews, edited videos and posted clips to social media.
It was a lot of work, but it became the ideal training ground.
“It definitely helped me find my own voice,” Funschelle said about her time in Wichita. “It was my way to cover sports in a way without any outside influences telling me that it wasn’t going to work. That definitely helped me learn how to advocate for myself and make things happen on my own.”
That voice — upbeat, stylish, conversational and genuinely curious — has become one of the biggest reasons for her success. Funschelle’s content often feels different because she does not approach athletes like they are only there to explain a game. She wants the details that show who they are. Her bubbly personality can make interviews feel looser and more revealing and her eye for fashion has helped her carve out a niche in a crowded space.
She also made another important bet early: Women’s sports were not some fringe topic. They were the future.
“When I first started, a lot of people were like, ‘Why would you waste your time doing this? No one is watching that,’” Funschelle said. “And the views were really low, but I just always believed in women’s sports. It kind of helped me solidify my spot in women’s sports and then once it took off, it helped my career take off in tandem with women’s sports.”
She was not someone who jumped into women’s sports once it became trendy. She was already there. She was posting when the views were low, when some people treated covering women’s sports like a charity project instead of a smart career decision — and when others wondered why she wasn’t focusing on bigger, more established leagues, like the NBA or NFL.
“It’s been so awesome, kind of like a ‘I-told-you-so moment,’” Funschelle said of women’s sports’ popularity. “I was so adamant telling people that women’s sports were a big deal.”
After graduating from Wichita State, Funschelle moved to New York City in 2021 to pursue a master’s degree in sport management at Columbia University. She finished in 2022, but New York ended up giving her much more than another credential.
It gave her access, opportunity and constant reps.
In New York, there was always a game to go to, always somebody to meet and always a chance to create. Funschelle became a regular at New York Liberty games and Gotham FC matches. She could also tap into Knicks, Nets, Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, Rangers and Islanders games, depending on the season. Even when professional tickets were out of reach in those early years, she found ways to stay around the sports scene, including filming content at Dyckman Park with famous streetball players.
Funschelle said she was “down bad financially” after moving, barely getting by while continuing to put time and money into her career.
“I was so broke,” she said, “but I think that really helped, constantly being around the scene.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but the grind would indeed pay off: It helped prepare her for the right moment. She was not waiting for the industry to validate her. She was building the skills and relationships she needed.
“I thought New York was going to be this huge city, and it is, but the sports community is so small,” Funschelle said. “It honestly feels a lot like Wichita, where everyone knows everyone and you run into the same people over and over.”
That small-world dynamic helped her build a network. And when her platform started growing, those relationships began turning into bigger opportunities.
In 2023, Funschelle signed with Distinction Agency and began working with founder Alex Onaindia, who helped her monetize her audience and momentum she had already built. In 2025, she finally dropped all of her side jobs and became a full-time sports content creator and host.
“Aliyah is truly dedicated to her craft and she’s gone all-in with it and it’s really paid dividends,” Onaindia said. “And I think she’s very relatable. She comes from Wichita, Kansas and was this girl with a dream to build a career like this and moved to the big city. I think that story is very relatable and her authenticity shines and people are drawn to that.”
That authenticity is central to what has made Funschelle stand out. Her manager believes viewers can tell she is genuinely passionate about women’s sports, and that sincerity has helped her build trust with both her audience and the brands that now want to work with her.
“She has found a voice for herself and what’s interesting about being ‘new’ media is eventually legacy media wants you,” Onaindia said. “Creators are everywhere for a good reason. Every brand and league wants them in the mix and Aliyah has done a great job of building relationships and allies along the way.”
As the media landscape has changed, that kind of work has become increasingly valuable. Brands want creators who can connect naturally with fans. Leagues want people who understand how sports are consumed on social media.
Funschelle, who was once told that her approach was not serious enough, now fits exactly what the industry is looking for.
In 2024, she went viral at the WNBA Draft when she captured Kate Martin’s shocked reaction to being selected in the second round by the Las Vegas Aces. Martin had not been invited to the draft and was there simply to support superstar teammate Caitlin Clark, but Funschelle happened to be sitting directly in front of her when the pick was announced.
It was one of those moments that looked lucky from the outside, but it only happened because Funschelle had worked her way into the room.
And this month brought another career highlight.
Through Plezi, a healthy beverage brand co-founded by Michelle Obama, Funschelle joined a creator collaboration that she initially expected to be little more than a meet-and-greet. Instead, the former First Lady invited Funschelle and four other creators to sit down and talk for nearly an hour.
The opportunity came in part because Funschelle had made an impression on NBA star Steph Curry’s publicists at a golf tournament the year before. Curry is also a partner in Plezi, and when the brand was looking to promote its product, Funschelle got the nod.
Those are the kinds of moments that now define her career. She has played pickleball with Eli Manning. She has filmed content with Lisa Leslie. She has spoken with some of the biggest stars in the WNBA, past and present. And her new podcast, “The Match-Up with Aliyah,” expands her brand onto a bigger platform.
The show pairs a high-profile athlete with a notable guest from a different world, then looks for the shared experiences and interests between them. Her first episode featured Olympic gold-medalist boxer Claressa Shields and Emmy-winning comedian Wanda Sykes.
Still, for all the growth, Wichita remains an integral part of Funschelle’s story.
Family has always mattered to her, and one of the things she is proudest of is building a life that allows her to come back home for important moments. With her younger brother, Ru, now a senior at Maize South, these things are even more important.
“That’s what I’m really proud of,” Funschelle said of continuing to grind. “Chasing your passion is one thing, but actually making it into a career where it pays your bills is something I’m really proud of. I always told my friends here that my goal was to be financially free enough to book flights home to Wichita whenever I wanted.”
Before the followers, before the brand deals, before the orange carpets and celebrity interviews, Funschelle was a Wichita native imagining a version of sports media that did not yet fully exist. She trusted that vision when plenty of people did not. She kept betting on women’s sports before the broader sports world had fully caught on.
Now, all before the age of 30, she is living out the career she once had to imagine for herself. Funschelle did not just benefit from being in the right place at the right time.
She helped put herself there.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 12:33 PM.
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