SHS’s marketing courses have decided to collaborate with the athletics department to give students opportunities to practice marketing and to work with businesses inside the school.
The collaboration is also meant to help the athletic department by finding ways to increase game attendance.
“It’s important that the issue of low attendance at athletic events was given some urgency, because school spirit plays a big role in bringing people together,” senior Ashley Marcial said. “I like that this partnership is focused on creating change and finding new ways to get students more involved.”
Business teacher Donald Manning and his marketing courses are collaborating with the football, volleyball and soccer programs to find out what causes the lack of attendance.
“We’ve noticed the past couple of years that our student attendance has kind of dipped a little bit,” athletic director Nick Stevens said.
Marketing students found that one of the main causes for low student attendance at athletic events is due to students being unaware that the events are happening.
As a result, marketing students are working on ways to more efficiently inform students about the events and make them more entertaining.
“We plan to improve sports attendance by promoting events through posters, social media, and school announcements, while also finding ways to make games feel more engaging with things like themes, spirit days, or student activities,” Marcial said.
The reason football, volleyball and basketball were chosen as the main targets for this collaboration is because they are ticketed sports, meaning they draw money in for the school.
“Ninety-percent of the budget comes from ticket sports. And so obviously we want people to go to the ticketed events,” Manning said. “We want them to go to the other (sports) like tennis and that, but reality is those sports don’t bring money. And so we got to have the ticket sports.”
Accordingly, marketing students are working hard to come up with strategies to attract more attention to the games. While the students are the ones who come up with the ideas, it is ultimately the athletic department’s decision to determine if they get implemented or not.
A potential benefit of the collaboration between SHS marketing course and the athletics department is it may help increase attendance to school events, but its second purpose is to give students hands-on opportunities to learn more about marketing in the real world.
“It’s good practice, I mean they’re getting practice on the process. Also, hopefully they’ll be able to see the actual outcome of it.” Manning said.
