“My goal for the athletics marketing is for the students to own it and make it theirs.” says Ben Wharton, Sports Marketing Director. With a new school year comes the beginning of fall sports, and the athletics marketing department has worked hard to create a way to promote the athletics to Covenant and the surrounding community. The idea began last year with posters and giveaways to draw Covenant fans to athletic events, but that was just the beginning. This year, the idea has expanded with Covenant’s own Instagram and Twitter accounts with the name @scotsbluecrew. Pretoria Den Boer, who works most of the social media knows that the social media reaches a lot of the Covenant community and wants the students to feel involved, “We want to start letting the fans take part and send pictures in from the games they are attending, and we will pick the top photo and use it on our social media accounts.”
Austin Cantrell, a member of the marketing team, also created the name “Blue Crew” to give our student body a unifying identity. “We wanted a simple name that the campus could rally around at the sporting events,” said Scott McKnight, another marketing intern for athletics.
Wharton has stressed that they want the fans to know they are appreciated and has developed ways to execute that dream. Covenant has increased its number of corporate sponsors, one of which is Chick-Fil-A, who will be supplying food at one home game of each sports team at Covenant this year. This idea has already been put into action at the last cross country meet which drew in over 100 students to the event. The surrounding Lookout Mountain community is also a part of Covenant’s target fan base. The marketing department wanted to reach out to this group in ways like having youth teams play during the half time of varsity games or bringing in special performances such as a professional gymnastics team. But Wharton says that isn’t all that draws the students to games, “The teams are playing well this year, which has increased the buzz around campus.”
The marketing team still has plans in the making that they hope to see in the near future. “We have ideas for inflatable games at sporting events and a reward system for students who participate in coming to the games,” Wharton said. Their hope is that Covenant will grow in its support of our sports teams so that Covenant itself can grow as a community.