Students at St. Catherine’s High School in Racine, Wis., cheer during a basketball game. Packed stands are one of the best ways to encourage greater participation in athletics.
Increase Athlete Participation By Reaching Out To The Student Body
5 keys for encouraging non-athletes to take the jump into athletics
Excelsior High School, Norwalk, Calif. H
ealthy athletic departments always have strong support from the school’s student
body. You don’t want an atmosphere at your school where athletics is sepa- rate from the academic student body. When non-athletes are connected to your program, you have a better shot of encouraging more of those students to come out for sports down the road. There are five ways to ensure the non-athletes in your school are just as connected to athletics as the peo- ple in uniform.
1. Win! Teenagers don’t want to spend their time in losing programs. They need to be a part of a winning program and culture. The sad reality is a vast ma- jority of children in this generation don’t care to be a part of a team unless there is something in it for them.
44 March/April 2013 By Chris Fore, C.A.A.,
In this day and age when everyone wins a trophy at the youth level, and there seems to be a “national cham- pion” around every corner, if your program doesn’t win, then don’t ex- pect to attract students who are on the fence about playing.
2. Get Your Non-Athletes To Attend Games
When non-athletes attend games on campus, you have a better chance of recruiting them for a sports team. Subsequently, the more students at-
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body. This is something we did as we noticed dwindling student support for our teams. Go with a raffle ticket reward system. For example, going to a football game is a popular event, so reward students with one raffle ticket for attending. For less popular sports, give out more raffle tickets to those in attendance. Our girls tennis matches do not attract many fans, so we give three tickets to students in attendance at those events. Col- lect the tickets throughout the school year and host a raffle before summer break with cash and prize giveaways.
If your program doesn’t win, then don’t
expect to attract students who are on the fence about playing ...
tending events, the more popular ath- letics becomes at your school, which leads to more participation. One idea is to start a “Fan Of The Year” contest within your student
The school year after institut- ing the “Fan Of The Year” contest yielded our highest athletics partici- pation rate in history. In the fall, we had 25 percent more students come
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IMAGE COURTESY OF SCHS LANCE YEARBOOK STAFF
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