How the Southern Conference Partners with Classrooms

Education and Giving Back. These are definitely values that are shared across the majority of college programs and conferences I've chatted with. But how is that demonstrated? How do we bring teams together in a way that truly makes an impact?

Southern Conference Week starts now.

Hit the SoCon home page and scroll down to the bottom of the page...

Keep scrolling... And you'll see the middle button "Adopt A Class." Let's dive in.

Clicking in takes us to a release with the full story, here. They are uniting the 11 women's basketball programs around the site of the conference tournament in a way that I'm guessing will teach both the teams and local children a lot about life. But you really need to go deep into the details to feel the power...

Here's a few selected excerpts:

"With the cooperation of all 11 women's basketball teams, the Southern Conference Adopt-A-Class program has been initiated for the 2010-11 season. The program is designed to create a tie between SoCon student-athletes and elementary school children in the greater Chattanooga community, site of the 2011 SoCon women's basketball tournament.

Throughout the basketball season, the conference will be sending pictures, player profiles and assorted logo items to the teachers of the 22 elementary classes (two per SoCon team). SoCon athletes will exchange cards and notes electronically, as well as in the mail.

Grade school teachers will be encouraged to create a bulletin board display of their adopted SoCon team to follow their progress all season. All children in the program will receive vouchers for free admission to a session of the SoCon women's basketball tournament, which runs March 3-7 in Chattanooga's McKenzie Arena."

Nice.

So 22 classrooms are participating. And each team gets to interact with 2 of them during the season. The classes no doubt will start to look up to the student-athletes and will learn a lot about teamwork and fighting through challenges. Oh, and I'm guessing they'll have a special moment when the tourney starts. This will build anticipation and a feeling of connection in the local community.

Here's a list of the classrooms/schools so you can get a visual feel for this...

How could this be better? I'd love to see a snapshot of each classroom's bulletin board. It'd bring a visual understanding of the reality of this program -- it is a great idea that benefits the community, the schools, and the conference. And it would naturally evolve through the year. Could we get to a point where we see the tale of the season, through the eyes of children? Now imagine the impact if the SoCon rolled this out to all teams.... Wow.

Come back tomorrow as we continue rolling through a week of best practices in the Southern Conference.

Don't forget, you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter: I'm@pawlow34.

Andy