CULLMAN, Ala. – For those who follow Cullman High School on social media, you may have noticed some new regular features popping up in recent weeks — spotlight graphics highlighting the senior athletes across all sports, complete with snazzy design work, basic information, photos and more.
The initiative is part of a fun new project taken on by Cullman High Schools’ sports marketing students, aimed at shining a light on the many student-athletes who suit up every week to represent Cullman High School.
Cullman High’s sports marketing class is one of many career and technical education courses offered to students across all grades, along with entrepreneurship, business software applications, digital marketing, computer science, engineering, educators in training, health science and sports medicine, nutrition and wellness and more.
As for how the spotlight project came about, Cullman High teacher Amy Hudson, who teaches the sports marketing course, said CHS Assistant Principal Aaron Sparks pitched an idea to do a “fall preview” of sorts for Cullman High sports. From there, the idea evolved into a spotlight focusing on local student athletes, giving marketing students a chance to sharpen their design and presentation skills.
“I thought it would be cool for our class to market our school athletics as we learn about marketing,” Hudson explained. “So we jumped in and started off talking about what the purpose of marketing a team is? It’s a little different than marketing a product or service to sell. So we came up with our ‘why?’ And that ‘why’ was to connect to our fans.”
The “Senior Spotlight” idea was born from brainstorming ways marketing students could preview the teams, while searching for inspiration from other graphics and campaigns that had been done before. Hudson said they’re still working through the many, many senior student-athletes, and working with them all to get involved in the project by writing their own “letter” included in their spotlight.
“It’s been so fun. As far as the way we are spotlighting these seniors, I just thought it would be a really cool thing for them to do, sending a letter to their classmates, teachers, family, etc. Each letter is unique to that student,” Hudson explained. “I think that the more we do, the more the parents and students are going to be excited about who is next. I just hope they will see the value in it and how much people enjoy seeing them and more and more will want to participate.”
As for the marketing students, they’re using the senior spotlights as a way to refine their design skills with software like Canva Pro, while expanding into Photoshop. Looking ahead, Hudson said the plan is to spotlight every student in every athletic program, along with the Cullman High School band, throughout the school year.
