Friday Photos: Academic Athlete of the Week
Here's a VERY effective way to celebrate the STUDENT-athletes in your program.
As a reminder, Friday Photos is additional player development content to dive into the player development programming and initiatives over my career in the role. This content is broken into WHY the programming and initiative happened, HOW we were able to do it, and the OUTCOME from the programming or initiative.
Why?
This is a great way to tangibly reward and celebrate those athletes who have been incredible students throughout the week. This award is earned by any student-athlete in the program. This can create equity in celebrating academic excellence amongst the roster. There are some athletes who won’t hit the GPA thresholds we all desire, but they are working to the best of their ability as well. This is a great way to celebrate the efforts put in each week by the student-athletes in your program.
How?
Get the initiative approved by the head coach. Then get with the academic staff, inform them about the initiative, and then ask them to send in their nomination each week.
When I was at Baylor, Emily DeRatt would send me the winner every Friday, it went from a meeting each week to a message with a name and the reason why. This information was given to the head coach to be cleared and announced to the program during the big team meeting on Monday. Before it was announced the information was sent to the creative media team. The graphic was shared with the team first then shared through the team Twitter account.
Outcome?
Academic pride. The student-athlete, the academic staff, coaches, teammates, professors, family, friends, and even former teachers all shared in the accomplishments of the student-athlete.
Hope you enjoyed this Friday Photos newsletter.
This is an added initiative to take you into the player development programming and initiatives I created, used, and facilitated in my career in the role.
If you want a deeper dive into the overall programming I used in my career, click this link here for the Player Development Programming Workshop.
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