Announcing sports in high school

Another activity I did during high school was announce sporting events. When they were held at our school, I got to sit with the scorekeepers and over the PA system emcee the game.

I started by doing wrestling in my sophomore year then added boys and girls basketball as well as boys and girls track my and junior and senior years. I had a notebook in which I worte out my script for the game.

During this time, I also wrote wrestling stories for the sports section of the local newspaper.

When I graduated, I received a "leadership award" from my high school for my promoting sports and school spirit in part for the announcing gig.

My involvement in the FFA

Did you know that I went to high school I was in the FFA or the Future Farmers of America? I lived on a farm, and my dad was very involved in FFA when he was in hgih school, so I was sort of obligated to be involved!

I entered all of the speaking contests. I want first pace during during eleventh grade in the conservation district's speaking contest and went on to sectionals I think in my senior year.

Another kind of speaking I was in was the FFA's parliamentary procedure team. A group of five of us would demonstrate how to use parlimanetary procedure in a meeting! I know it sounds kind of boring, but it was a real challenge to learn it and use it as a team, and that made it a lot of fun!

And yes, I even wore one of those blue FFA jackets.

The picture above shows an award I received as a graduating senior year for my involvement as a speaking contests.

My high school school spirit award

One award you'll always see hanging on my office wall, Kieran, is one I received my senior year of high school for "leadership in school spirit"!

From my sophomore (10th grade) through my senior year (12th grade), I announced wrestling meets, basketball games, and track meets at my high school in Menomonie, Wis. In addition, during my senior year my friends and I launched a "sticker" campaign in which the morning of the boys basketball game, we'd hand out stickers, with some slogan on it about beating whatever team we were playing that night, to everyone in school. Sometimes we'd also hang up posters with the slogan.

The stickers and posters helped get fellow students excited about the games, and more people started to attend, which I think got the basketball players more excited, and they started winning more games!

The reason I'm so proud of this award is because it shows what people can accomplish when they work together - and it just takes a few people to get everyone else excited about working together!