The community of Big Sandy has always impressed me with their wholehearted support of local sports and student activities. You always see the stands full at basketball games and the sidelines crowded for the football team. When the team bus rolls out of town for a tournament, the windows of shops and the roadsides are filled with signs supporting our student athletes. I didn’t grow up in a small town and have only been in town for a little over a decade, but I have been deeply impressed by the volume of outpouring of support from our little town. As much as Big Sandy supports our team from the stands and sidelines, there is an invisible need that has grown to a near critical level. They need parents, neighbors, and the adult members of the Pioneer family to step out of the stands and off of the sidelines to help carry encouragement and support to our kids.
The unsung hero in so much of the support given to our students is the Big Sandy Booster Club. The work they do to encourage the kids is largely behind the scenes and often gains little attention. I suspect a big part of the reason for their quiet place in the community support mechanism is that their entire job is to shine the light on the kids. To a degree, if you don’t see them, they are doing their job right. The downside of the Booster Club dynamic is that because they are behind the scenes, the huge crowd of potential supporters are often unaware of their needs or the opportunities to pitch in to make our students feel the encouragement of the community.
I spoke with Amy Terry, who is their treasurer: “Booster Club is a group of parents and community members that do fundraisers and collect sponsorships so that we can supplement what the school is doing for athletes and school activities. We try to help give the kids a little more wiggle room as far as being able to do things.” Amy went on to describe some of the projects the booster club has taken on: “One is the student athletes’ warm up gear. “Each sports team gets $20 per kid to get warm up gear every year.” They also contributed funds toward the “program to be able to go back and look at their games and make highlight reels for college coaches. They came to us and asked us to pay a portion of that, so we paid a portion of it.” Other projects (and there are quite a few) include buying (and putting up) signs to support the teams, contributing funds to the science club to help defray the cost of their educational trips, and many others. Amy also pointed out that the booster club supports both boys and girls sports equally, which is a requirement under Title 9 rules.
Last week, the Booster Club met to plan upcoming projects. They are currently aiming to improve our local sports facility in two ways. The first is to replace the wall mats in the gym that protect students from injury when they over run the court. The ones they are currently using have gotten old and are beginning to degrade. The other project is to add signage to the highway and roads in town directing visiting teams to the school. “We’ve also considered putting a sign out on the highway telling where our school is, because in small towns, the schools are always interesting to find.”
The most difficult part of the Booster Club’s work in Big Sandy is an ironic one. Our small town enthusiastically supports our schools, athletic programs, and extra-curricular activities, but the Booster Club has shrunk in size over the years to the point that only around 6 people are involved in the work on a regular basis. Everyone I spoke with who is involved in the club expressed that the greatest need they face is involvement. What they need most can be narrowed down into two areas. The first is volunteers to help with leg work type jobs like stuffing envelopes, selling 50/50 tickets at games, hanging up signs, filling coolers with Gatorade, and other work. Many of the jobs that need to be done are small, low commitment ones that only arise from time to time. The second need is similar. The Booster Club needs people to offer
ideas, make suggestions, and help to organize new projects. This is particularly critical because good ideas for projects and initiatives are vital to make a real impact in the lives of our kids and our school programs.
Donors are also an ongoing need. Warm up gear for students costs money. Gym improvements costs money. The group sends out an annual fundraising letter to area businesses. Their mailing list is always in need of new names and potential backers.
If you are ready to step off of the sidelines to support our teams, either by adding your name to the donor list, attending the meetings to help make things happen, or just by pitching in a few hours to nail down the leg work aspects you can reach out to any of the officers: Anna Bold, Amy Terry (350-0522) , Cheryl Strutz (378-2655), or Kelly Dixon. You can also contact the booster club through their Facebook page.
Cheering on our students is a huge deal. Many in the community are more than ready to step up and do more, but don’t know how. The Big Sandy Booster Club is a great organization and needs the community to step up. Are you ready to join the team?
