When Penn High School's athletic department realized their staff was spending two-plus hours on a single spring night creating game-day graphics, they made a decision that changed how their program operates: they handed the work to students.
Today, students in Penn's sports journalism class create the majority of the athletic department's graphics. More posts, higher engagement, larger crowds at games, and an AD who has his evenings back.
The most surprising part of the story isn't the time savings. It's how quickly students learn the work and how much they want to do it. Here's how the model works and how to set it up at your school.
Why Student Involvement Makes Sense
Most athletic administrators are managing 15+ sports, hundreds of student-athletes, and dozens of weekly events. Graphics for social media often land at the bottom of the priority list, which means they get done late at night, or don't get done at all.
Student involvement solves the problem in a way that benefits everyone.
The athletic department gets hours of weekly work off their plate. Students get real-world experience that connects to journalism, marketing, design, and digital media careers. Many programs run this through work-based learning credit, which gives the work academic legitimacy and motivates participation. The school gets a stronger social media presence that drives attendance at events and builds community pride.
What Students Should Be Creating
The most engaging athletic content isn't complicated. It's consistent, timely, and connects to specific students and games.
Game day graphics the night before or morning of each home game. Opponent, time, location, and a strong visual that fits your school's brand.
Score and recap graphics posted same-day, especially for wins. The same-day post captures the energy of the game while it's still fresh.
Player highlights and milestones. All-conference selections, signing days, senior nights. These graphics get massive engagement because they tap into individual students' networks of family and friends.
Schedule announcements and week-ahead posts that give parents and community members a single source of truth.
TV monitors and video boards across your facility. Starting lineups, in-game graphics, scoreboard displays, and screens in hallways or gyms. Students can produce this content for every home event without adding to the AD's workload.
Penn's experience shows the impact. When the soccer team started making graphics, more people came to games. People reposted to Instagram. Community engagement grew measurably.
Setting Up Student Creators
You have two main paths to building a student creator team.
Option 1: A sports journalism or media class. This is Penn's model. The work becomes part of the curriculum, students earn credit, and you have a built-in roster of creators each semester.
Option 2: Coach-delegated team representatives. Talk to each head coach and ask them to designate one player on their team to be the graphics lead. This works well for programs without a journalism class. The coach picks someone responsible, that student becomes the graphics point person for the season, and the rotation builds naturally as students graduate and new ones step in.
Both approaches work. The class model produces more consistent volume. The coach-delegation model spreads ownership across more students and gets buy-in from coaches who become invested in their team's social presence.
Penn's tutorial takes less than ten minutes per student. A quick refresher at the start of each season covers any new templates or brand updates. The total annual training investment per student is about 30 minutes.
That's possible because the right tool removes the technical barriers. Students don't need to know layers, masks, or typography. They need to pick a template, swap in the opponent logo, and customize the text.
The Tool Matters
This model only works if what you give students is genuinely easy to use. Students lose interest and coaches stop participating when design tools are too complex and take too much time. The system breaks.
The right tool has sport-specific templates ready to customize, automatic logo and information integration so students aren't hunting for opponent logos, and speed that matches the pace of athletics.
Penn's experience makes this clear. With Box Out, students can produce a polished game-day graphic in seconds because the templates, logos, and structure are already in place.
Getting Started
Identify your starting students. A journalism class works, but so does asking each head coach to designate one team representative.
Run a 10-minute training to get them creating. Start with one sport, ideally the one with the most engaged community at your school. Set a content rhythm of game day, score, and milestone posts. Expand to additional sports as the model works.
There probably aren't enough minutes in the day for sports communicators to do everything they have to do. Students can absolutely do this work. Schools benefit from the involvement. And you might even get a few more hours back at home.
