Promoting school sports and finding sponsors has been Sports Marketing students everyday since they started taking this class. Sports Marketing is a hands on interactive class that is limited to juniors and seniors.

“I`m interested in sports and figuring out the business marketing side of things.” senior Logan Foster said.

“ I want to major in marketing in general and this [sports marketing class] is kind of like a minor in sports marketing so it`s prepared me a lot because you get to experience everything basically in high school.” Foster said, “Not a lot of high schools have it or offer it so we`re very privileged.” From a juniors perspective Nick Kern told me.

“The easiest part I think would be I think just promoting sports and promoting stuff that’s the easiest part. The hardest part would be, we have to work with sponsors and businesses around and actually talk to real people.” Junior Nick Kern said.

“The hardest part would be thinking of ideas to promote the sport you have. If you have a sport that not a lot of people go to then it`s really hard to actually get people there. So you have to have really good ideas to promote it.” Kern said, “You get to work in groups a lot and you`re very busy a lot of the time but if you get your work done you get a lot of free time.”

“In Sports Marketing 1 [students] learn the basics of marketing, like who are targeting audiences.” Sports Marketing teacher Sara Havermann said. “They learn what different types of promotion are. We will learn about something called a sports event pyramid, which is made for specifically sporting and entertainment events. And then in sports two they take everything they learned in sports one and apply it to all the athletic programs that we have in school.”

Havermann also explained how this class prepares students for the future,

“You get a lot of hands-on experience, its not like a typical class where you come and you`re lectured and you take notes and you test.” She said. “Most of what we do in here is real world, they`re out in the community talking to people. They`re producing all of the games. It’s a lot of projects and challenges instead of traditional learning.”

Sports Marketing 1 and 2 both contribute to LHS sports by getting them sponsors and producing the games.

“Sports 1 does it with one event and they go out and find local sponsors to sponsor a specific event. Then the sponsors we have for Blue Jay Nation, we have 22 sponsors. Those are actually found by a company called Niles Media and then sports 2 is responsible for fostering that relationship,” Havermann said. “[The students are] their contact for those sponsors and they make sure all their needs are being met, all their contract requirements are being met and if the students are ambitious and they want to go out and find company sponsors they are more than welcome to do so.”

The hard work these classes put into promoting school sports and nurturing their relationships with our school sponsors is apparent at sporting events as well as in the classroom.