4 replies to this topic

[Johnp2]

First---I'd like to say how much I have enjoyed communicating with everyone on this forum. It's been great to "swap stories" with colleagues. ;-) It's amazing how we have people from all over the nation, different backgrounds, etc. yet all share the same enjoyment of volunteering our time to coach youth sports.

One of the big things each year for my teams is our "End of Season Trophy Presentation/Awards Ceremony". I'm curious as to if a) you have and end of season party, and if you do---what you typically do for it. I'm always looking for new ideas to make it more fun.

Without going into a lot of detail, each year we have a cook-out at a BEAUTIFUL local park. I rent the pavilion, which gives us access to a creek right next to it full of perch (if the kids want to fish), a sand volleyball court, basketball court, etc. It's somewhat of a "pot-luck" where the parents bring their favorite side dish, we have music, etc. After we eat, the Trophy Presentation/Awards Ceremony lasts about an hour, where I call each player up and spend about 10-15 minutes just gushing over the player and describing to everyone in attendance how he impacted our team that season. I present the player with his trophy and an individual award (a framed certificate). Things like "Best Sportmanship", "All-around Player", "Rookie of the Year", "Most Valuable Player", etc. These are not set awards, but instead whatever I feel best exemplifies the player.

My wife calls it "the speech", and you probably have seen how long-winded I can be, so it can take up to 1 to 1.5 hours (but everyone enjoys it as I try to keep it very animated and entertaining). I LOVED Coach Rob's idea of having the players do their best dance when they get their trophy. This year we are having it on Father's Day, so after I make my speech about the player, I will ask the father to come up and describe his best memory of his son that season. (I'm fortunate in that all players will have their father in attendance.)

I'd like to know what you guys all do as I'm confident there are some wonderful ideas that I can implement. As we all know, this is the best time to really bring everything together and leave a great taste in everyones' mouth with respect to how much fun the season was.

Thanks!

[Orange]

We go to a park and rent a pavilion. I have a team mom make all the arrangements. Each person brings their own lunch and the kids all run around and play. At the end we have the trophy presentation and my speech, which is a lot shorter than yours. I call each kid up and say something nice about them probably taking about 2-3 minutes for each kid. I actually talk about them without mentioning their name and they all end up guessing who it is before the kid comes up. It's usually pretty obvious who it is but fun for them to guess.

The year before I had a couple of parents take some awesome shots during our games. I then had my brother create a game program with all the kids kind of like in a real football program. It was like 6 pages and the last 4 were action shots during the season. They all loved it and it was a great keepsake. I never got around to it this year though.

[rushbuster70]

We had a pool party at one of the kids house.It was fun.They enjoyed it.Had a nice bbq also

[Orange]

One more thing we did which everyone enjoyed, I projected everyones future position with certain college teams. College football is very big here in Florida so everyone likes that.

[Johnp2]

Thanks guys, really neat ideas! I like the "guess who it is?" and the "college team prediction". I am here in Dallas where Pro Football is king, and of course nothing else matters than the Dallas Cowboys (as it should be.) I might offend some parents if I put their kids on the Eagles--yuk! ;-)

This is always my favorite time of year. My team has not fared well in the win/loss record---but "we are what we are", and we are a team. Everything we did was complete team involvement.

We lost more games this year than I have combined in all my year's coaching--but yet this is my favorite team. I've seen that losing can help bond a team as much as winning. Years from now, these kids will forget their win/loss record but (I hope) remember all the special moments they had and how they made an impact to the team.

The end of season party is such a great time to have fun and yuk it up with the players (although I am already notorious for that---I am on their maturity level, I guess). Ha!

Thanks again!