Senior Citizens

Make their last season their most memorable one!

As this rather strange season is winding down, I wanted to share something we did for a number of years during the last home regular season game. As, almost everything we used in our program, I did not come up with this idea on my own. Originality is not one of my strong points.

Some time ago I made the executive decision to end "Parent Night" and replace it with "Senior Night." Now, I am not very creative, so I must admit I stole the idea of "Senior Night" from watching college games. I never was a big fan of "Parents Night" for a number of reasons. First, many parents really were uncomfortable with the attention given to them. Second, some players had parents who did not show up so the players were embarrassed and third, it became an extra expense for our Hoop Club if we gave out flowers for example to all the parents. Giving flowers out in February was a common gift but I am not certain how many of those flowers even made it home! The Parent's Night program took time and pushed the start of the game back or made halftime longer. Neither were positives in my mind. We decide to follow the lead of many colleges and have what we called "Senior Recognition Night." I liked the idea of recognized those who had put years into our program. So, during the last home regular season game, we recognized our seniors. This included players, managers, video, and stats people. Anyone who was a senior and filled a meaningful role in our program.. (We would have recognized senior cheerleaders but we did not have cheerleaders.)

Before the varsity game on Senior Recognition Night, we recognized each of the seniors in the program. This included players and managers. We talked about each of the seniors. How they contributed to the program and about what their future plans were. We presented each of them with an individualized award that we had designed by a local merchant.

Now these are SENIOR citizens!

We never had a single complaint about dropping the traditional Parent's Night with the Senior Recognition Night. Our program took about 10-15 minutes.

Related to this was what we did for the graduating seniors at the end of the school year. I wrote a personalized letter thanking each of the graduating seniors for their contribution to the program. I also included a copy of the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling in that letter along with their graduation card and gift.

Recognition of the seniors took only a few minutes and became a significant

event at the end of the season. This method did not make any of our players

uncomfortable nor did it cause undue stress on parents. The only person who I think this night caused stress for was ME. I had to use the P.A. system.

Not my favorite task, but this event was not about me.