Countless young men and women across the country are working and training hard — really hard, incredibly hard — while continuing to study and work their way through high school, and sometimes even holding down jobs part time in the workplace, as well. Too often it is too difficult to get them the recognition that you know they deserve. Here are a few things you can do to celebrate your spring track team.

Raise awareness throughout the community with yard signs.

Yard signs are fairly commonplace, but they are often for (aside from the political) biggies like football, basketball, baseball, and sometimes soccer. On the whole, you see them for what are typically thought of as “team” sports, while people who aren’t in the know tend to view track and field as a sport composed of individual events. Yard signs can be personalized with individual player names as well as to announce weekly events. Use both at school and throughout the neighborhood. This way, the community at-large can see that track players live and work among them, and perhaps be encouraged to go support their local high school or neighbor at an event. Yard signs with players names can also be used to line a pathway or the school quad for a track and field spirit week to celebrate the individual team members at school.

Have a spirit week at school… just for track and field!

Yes, baseball and softball are coming, and soccer is looming on the horizon as well. However, spirit weeks don’t have to be massively costly to be successful at their original purpose: giving credit where credit is due and raising enthusiasm and pride across the campus. Banners promoting the track and field team can be draped across the entrance (or exits!) of the school, where everyone can be sure to take note.  As a track and field promotion during spirit week, if you are selling school or athletic-related apparel like hoodies and t-shirts, let everyone know that if they purchase anything during that week, they will get a track and field personalized drawstring bag, as well!

Make sure everyone at school knows who the motivated athletes on the track team are!

• Pick a certain day of the week for the track team to wear their team jackets to school, and have everyone do it. Fellow students may be surprised who is in their class on the team!
• Following a meet, announce the team members who placed first in any given even that next Monday in homeroom or over the intercom.
• Long-haired track athletes can get fun and funky with Bling Strings in their hair. Check regulations, but these can be tied up in ponytails or buns tightly and will also help your school stand out at meets!
• Make notebooks available for all the track athletes to use, and offer personalized track spirit notebooks for sale as part of your track and field fundraising. The more visibility, the more awareness, and the more excitement!

Give those motivated fans something to cheer with!

While noisemakers can be a touch inappropriate for track and field events that require concentration, unless there are regulations prohibiting their use, sprinters could use all the encouragement! For other events, such as shot put, long jump, or discus, create special signs with prominent, easy to read lettering. Right before the athlete makes their winning put, hurl, or jump, they can look up into the crowd and gather extra momentum from all the support they see in the stands.

Finally, don’t forget to bring along some extra megaphones so that your encouraging cheers don’t get swept away in the wind.

Welcome the seniors and their families with Personalized Vertical Banners showing pictures of your school’s athletes in action.  Create a life size stand up from a picture of their freshman year or a giant 3-foot Big Head Cutout of their face for friends and family to wave when they are being honored.

You will also want to include a goodie bag filled with both fun and keepsake items such as personalized water bottles, key chains with the team photos. Personalized items create a memorable token for your seniors.  Let your imagination run wild with Do It Yourself treat bags that you can fill with either candy or healthy snacks. Or both! Make Senior Night for the class of 2013 one that they’ll be talking about in 2023 at their 10-year reunion!

Illinois and Indiana both claim to have started March Madness with high school basketball playoffs, but whether you’re playing in the Midwest or coast-to-coast, school spirit has an insatiable thirst this month. Give in to the enthusiasm and make sure your players and biggest fans have enough to drink with durable polycarbonate or plastic water bottles personalized with your school’s name, the year, certain player’s names, or even just “March Madness!” You could toss these out during basketball games to get the crowd even more pumped up, or sell them as part of a sports fundraiser.

Next, advertise your school spirit with banners for pep rallies, star players, and all the big games that are happening this month. Weave your school colors through fencing and around the hallways using gossamer or even durable, flame-resistant poly vinyl. Nothing is more exciting than walking into your high school or college gymnasium to find huge signs promoting the team and the starting players surrounding by bright streams of school colors.

Speaking of color, you can use lots of it to spruce up the hallway in your high school with affordable graphic banners that are designed for lockers.  Personalize them to match your school colors as well as with names. These can be used for all your superstars, too; marching band, the yearbook, or even just that special person in your life that needs a little bit of motivation as the end of the school year looms, but is still very far away.

Finally, be sure and surprise boys and girls, women and men’s basketball superstars with Big Heads; use them in the crowd or attach them along the walls or fencing with their number and cheer them on throughout March Madness and for the year to come. Remind them who their biggest fans are and frighten the opposition with your school spirit, to boot!

Peace, Love, Spirit!

While it’s certainly true that in the minor leagues (and high school or grade school), there’s no event with quite the away game/home crowd draw like the Super Bowl, promotional directors and general managers still have plenty of advice to give.

Keep it fun and affordable

Paul Taglieri, general manager of the St. Lucie Mets, says that “We’ll do basically anything as long as it’s not stepping over the line that we draw for ourselves. We just try to stay with fun, family, affordable-type atmosphere. That’s where our promotions are centered.”

Theme night

In that vein, one of the promotions the St. Lucie Mets undertake is 70s night, complete with 70 cent dogs and drinks, and fans are encouraged to wear clothing mimicking the look of the 70s. You could make your theme night stand out a Tie Dye or 80s Water Bottle Label. Perhaps offer drink refills for 80 cents for fans with a theme night stadium cup.

Light it up!

Oklahoma Sooners encourage their baseball fans on “Cheer like a Champion” night, handing out special spirit apparel to the first 50 fans in the door, encouraging team support. You could recreate that with personalized #1 Spirit hand mitts.

Make it a holiday

Celebrate Earth Day like the Sooners and other college and national teams, and have personalized travel mugs for cold or hot drinks.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day! Get the crowd going with these green hand clapper necklaces and inflatable bam bams.Use green drink cups for refreshments and don’t forget to offer special treats for those wearing green (or your team colors), like fun lighted spirit poms or lucky candy bars.

Be a helper for your mascot!

How old is your mascot?

Finally, the St. Louis Cardinal’s celebrate Fredbird’s birthday – why not celebrate your mascot’s birthday? It’s a terrific crowd draw for a theme as well as providing great incentive to get pumped up during halftime. Make a week out of it like the Cardinals.  Students can walk in under a reusable archway and compete to become the mascot’s helper, as he probably needs it in his old age.  Finally, the night of the big game (and the big birthday bash!), create a banner for your mascot to run through as your fans herald the mascot (and your team) with fun stadium horns.

Here are ideas for using sound and noisemakers the most effectively.

Coordination. We have many options for noisemakers including voices, bodies or “special equipment”. Select sounds for the various team actions and situations and use them consistently. For example, foot-stomping and/or hissing can be used during free throws, whistles for bad plays, cowbells for scores and so on. You probably already have some conventions (which may differ from these examples) and that’s great! You don’t have to change the routine, just build on it for a better, well-coordinated repertoire.

Rhythms. Speaking of coordination, we recommend teaching fresh rhythms to use with percussion-type noisemakers such as bams. The classic rhythm example to use is the opening of Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” but there’s nothing wrong in finding your own catchy rhythm to use with percussion, with or without voice. We like these routines for warming up the crowd, for your team pulling ahead, or for any other celebratory situation.

Visual pairings. We are visual creatures, so don’t neglect the visual as well as the audio. Pair them up! One easy way is to use color, with as many fans as possible wearing team color shirts, morph suits and team supplies such as signs. You might also provide wearable props, such as hats, for a row or block of spectators. Wearable props might be about team colors, or it might consist of a visual salute to a holiday game or tourney, such as Valentine’s or a Mardi Gras event theme. (Imagine, for example, a block of fans or band clad in Mardi Gras glitter top hats next month.)

Another visual to pair with noise is dance moves, which has reminded us of the Interlude Dance. Below is the video, which includes step-by-step instructions as well as group shots in various settings, making it fun to watch whether or not you already know the dance.

Your fans needn’t get as involved as the Interlude people but having a few good moves is a wonderful thing, is what we’re saying.

Got a few good moves yourself? Share them in the comments!