By Staff
Coaching Management, 13.8, September 2005, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm1308/bbpurdooligans.htm
When Purdue University hosts a track meet, visiting teams frequently comment on how organized and well run everything is: There’s always someone standing by to promptly rake the pits, operate indicator boards, and offer a helping hand. How did meet organizers go out and secure so much support? They didn’t—the track team was “adopted,” so the support came to them.
Last year, Purdue’s athletic promotions office launched the adopt-a-sport program, aimed at boosting attendance at home sporting events and getting more students interested in athletics. Residence halls, fraternities, sororities, and student organizations were encouraged to adopt a Boilermaker team, and offered incentives for doing so. For signing up, the proud parents were provided with T-shirts identifying them as “Purdooligans” for their sport, e-mail reminders before each home contest, and a once-per-season hospitality event, typically held at a local restaurant. In return, each student in the group promised to attend a set number of events on the team’s home schedule.
“It all started because we found that every time we gave away T-shirts, a lot of students came to our sporting events,” says Sara Fetzer, Assistant Promotions Director for the athletic department. “So to inspire students to come out to watch our Olympic sports, we created this affinity program. We got groups of students involved with a specific sport, and they took ownership of being there to support the team they had adopted.”
While the main idea was to put more fans in the stands, attendance wasn’t a problem for Purdue’s track meets, which typically draw 500-1,000 spectators. So when students from the fraternity and sorority who had adopted track started showing up at meets, they soon asked how they could get more involved. “Some of them had track experience from high school, so they knew how much work went into running a track meet,” says Jack Warner, Head Men’s and Women’s Coach. “They told us they would rather be doing something for the meet than just watching, and we said we always need people to help, so they jumped right in.”
Throughout the season, meet organizers regularly counted on the Purdooligans to provide helping hands, with as many as 20 showing up to an event. They moved hurdles and other event apparatus, ran indicator boards to display results (a luxury that hadn’t always been possible before), and even performed tasks that are sometimes difficult to find volunteers for. “Raking the pits is a really gruesome job,” says Warner, “and there were these three guys who for some reason loved doing it. We showed them on the first day how it was done and from then on they came to every meet, and we had the best raked pits in the conference.”
In addition to all their help at the meets, Warner says an added benefit of the adopt-a-sport program was that it garnered extra recognition for track athletes on campus. “It gave the kids a little bit of an identity outside the athletic department,” he says. “I hope those students will sign up to adopt us again next year.”