Atlantic Sun Best Practices: Lipscomb Gets Very Personal

Warning.

Today's take is about a program that gets extremely personal. And personal can make some people uncomfortable, as this level of openness is not the norm in today's world. But when you are leading a low-to-mid major program, being personal separates you. And that's what we'll find today with Lipscomb.

Hit the Lipscomb Athletics page, and deep down the right-hand side of the page you'll see a callout for "Josh Slater: To Be a Bison."

Click in and you'll hit this spot, what is essentially a microsite to the Senior Student-Athlete who's leading their basketball squad. The video you'll note in this image is extremely deep (it's over 6 minutes long) and begins with testimonials from Josh's parents on why they were happy with his choice to attend Lipscomb.

The video shifts and interviews Josh's high school coach about his choice. (and about the type of athlete he was)

And, of course, it includes a testimonial from Josh plus his best friend on campus on himself now. How he fell for the lure of drugs and alcohol but evolved into a new person (and student leader) at Lipscomb.

As you can tell from the images, the video is very well done. It touches on many great points that many of us leave out: Why did he choose Lipscomb? What is he like away from the court? What do his parents think of Lipscomb? And what kind of impact has the program made on him? Other programs should follow this lead: there's power in the voices of parents, high school coaches, teammates, and classmates. And this is something that will always be valuable for future student athletes and their families to check out.

Josh sums it up with his final quote: "To Be a Bison is to Love."

How could this be better? It should be easy to share and view. Currently you can't take the code and drop it in a blog, or even send a link to play that video. (Or I would have done that above!) I'd also love to see this expand to have Josh tell the story of his teammates. There's something powerful about a leader telling us what he loves about his teammates, you know?

That's it for the Atlantic Sun.

Come back Monday as we shift on to our next conference. Don't forget, you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter: I'm @pawlow34.

Andy