Booster Club of the Week: Brentwood High School

This week’s Booster Club of the Week features Brentwood High School’s 12th Man Club. We had the opportunity to speak to President Amos Jones to learn more about their Friday night ritual and what three words describe their booster club.

Each booster club has their own Friday night ritual, can you tell us more about yours?

At Brentwood, we work very hard to let each team heavily influence their team’s Friday night rituals…most are carried on year to year, but we definitely believe that there are no “sacred” traditions that can’t evolve with the times and the teams.

This year’s team, Team 2016, is a great example of a team that has the Friday Night game back to the traditional focus with a focus on food and fellowship. Kelly Smith and her team have pulled out all the stops with music, food and fun! This new focus on the fellowship of the parents has created a larger crowd for the Player Walk when the parents and families all line up and cheer on the team as they walk to the field for warm-ups…it’s a great experience for both our athletes and parents.

We also have a strong element of parental involvement on Friday Nights…with home games led by the Tail-Gate experience and the away games led by the “Road Warriors”.

For home games, we have no less than 40 parents actively involved in each game…6 for stats, 5 in the press box to manage the announcing, spotting, clock and scoreboard management. We have 4 dads working the sidelines, 2 dads managing the cameras, 3 -4 mothers working the merchandise booth, 6 moms serving the pre-game meal, 10 parents that are invested in field preparation and then sponsorship committee that manages the special recognitions during time-outs.

For Away games, we have approximately 20 parents actively involved in each game… a truck and trailer crew travels with the team to haul our sideline equipment, hydration support, training supplies and camera equipment. In addition, we have our stats team travel to the game to manage the stats and to report, our camera crew to video the game and help set-up and tear-down. Our meal committee work to coordinate meals and usually post-game snack / meals depending on the trip length.

As you can see, we have a very active Bruin program that supports  our team.

How many members do you have in your booster club and how many members does it take to make each Friday night successful?

We have come a long way over the last 6 years increasing the involvement of parents in our booster program with meetings usually have about 40-50 in attendance. Our actual membership is roughly 95% plus of our roster size. I believe that we have created a compelling reason for parents to be actively participating in our program for at least one of many reasons. We have more than just football operations to involve parents. We have an ACT Program which encourages our athletes to be involved in community service in our community with our athletes investing over 2750 this year alone to support our elementary school events, special olympics, lawn work for widows, youth football camps and supporting special events in our Brentwood community.

We are able to include so many parents with the model of empowering committee chairs to create a team to manage and oversee events so that parents can find almost any type of opportunity to be involved…from Stadium Clean-Up to washing uniforms and cleaning locker rooms if game nights don’t fit their ability to volunteer.

For this school year, what types of fundraisers do you have planned?

We have completed the fund-raising for Team 2016 and in January, we will begin the planning of the Team 2017 fund-raising. We have some staples that we begin our planning calendar by confirming that the event still meets our needs and then determining where we can supplement those efforts with supplemental events.

Those staples include the following: Blue-Gold game (May), Goodwill Drive (June), Team Fund-Raiser (card sales recently) (June), Loudermilk Memorial Golf Tournament (July), Back to School Sale (July / August)

What is your first goal you look to accomplish this year?

Our first goal every year probably would have to begin and end with our Football Banquet. We have a special tradition of recognizing our graduating seniors and welcoming them to their new role as Bruin Alumni. We recognize their contributions to our successful and consistent football program and make a place for them in our rich foundation of Bruin Alumni that now has legacy players where both father and son have shared the experience. Before the night is over, we end the night welcoming our Freshman team to the Varsity squad and introducing the new upcoming team. This night sets the stage for promoting leadership, re-energizing our teams and parents and sets the tone for the coming season.

Give us three words to describe your Booster Club?

Family, Heritage, Consistency

[scroller style=”sc1″ title=”More School Stories ” display=”cats” cats=”45″ number_of_posts=”8″ speed=”5000″]