Post by jhanawa on Apr 18, 2007 9:51:00 GMT -6
How many of your schools have a Lettermen's club? Many moons ago when I was in HS, we founded a Lettermen's club. Essentially, to be a member you had to earn a Varsity letter and maintain a C average while being on track to graduate. Any discipline issues in school would also affect membership.
What did we do that made it the COOL thing to be involved with? We had monthy "socials/meetings", we opened up the gym for members only volleyball, basketball, dodge ball, etc, had pizza's brought in, punch, etc. We had a "winter trip", basically packed up about 6-8 School Vans with kids, food, equipment and went to the mountains for 3 days of snow fun, skiing, tubing, etc. We worked out a deal with a HS in Northern AZ to use their Gym (during Christmas Break) so we slept in the Gym. These were fantastic life story type trips. In the late spring, same deal, we packed everybody up, hooked boats to the hitch and took a 2 day water ski trip.
The gist of it was this: We had a bunch of city kids, most of whom never had been outside of the city, so it was a great experience for them. Also, I can't think of a better way to bond athletes from different sports into a tight knit group. It made our athletes "lettermen", rather than only football players or golfers or whatever. It was great for school pride. Of course all of the non athletes were unhappy and jelous because of the things that we got to do, but it also served as motivation for people to play sports and be a part of it.
We've carried on the tradition into the youth teams that I've been involved with the last 7 years, taking them from AZ to S.Cal to play CA teams and taking them to Magic Mountain, etc. The point of it was to create a bonding experience between teamates and give them an lifetime experience. We have kids from 7 years ago come back and want to "chaparon" because they had so much fun. Its a great tradition and school pride builder.
Anyway, I'm curious to what you guys do along these lines, I'm sure there are some great stories, I know I've got a ton of great ones from these trips.
What did we do that made it the COOL thing to be involved with? We had monthy "socials/meetings", we opened up the gym for members only volleyball, basketball, dodge ball, etc, had pizza's brought in, punch, etc. We had a "winter trip", basically packed up about 6-8 School Vans with kids, food, equipment and went to the mountains for 3 days of snow fun, skiing, tubing, etc. We worked out a deal with a HS in Northern AZ to use their Gym (during Christmas Break) so we slept in the Gym. These were fantastic life story type trips. In the late spring, same deal, we packed everybody up, hooked boats to the hitch and took a 2 day water ski trip.
The gist of it was this: We had a bunch of city kids, most of whom never had been outside of the city, so it was a great experience for them. Also, I can't think of a better way to bond athletes from different sports into a tight knit group. It made our athletes "lettermen", rather than only football players or golfers or whatever. It was great for school pride. Of course all of the non athletes were unhappy and jelous because of the things that we got to do, but it also served as motivation for people to play sports and be a part of it.
We've carried on the tradition into the youth teams that I've been involved with the last 7 years, taking them from AZ to S.Cal to play CA teams and taking them to Magic Mountain, etc. The point of it was to create a bonding experience between teamates and give them an lifetime experience. We have kids from 7 years ago come back and want to "chaparon" because they had so much fun. Its a great tradition and school pride builder.
Anyway, I'm curious to what you guys do along these lines, I'm sure there are some great stories, I know I've got a ton of great ones from these trips.
