Making a T&F record board for my school

We always had a printed out Excel Spreadsheet. That was enough, the kids who cared looked at it, the ones who didn't wouldn't have known which marks were strong and weak anyway.

Yes, an Excel sheet can also easily updated -- I find that the most fun part: To come to our board with current season's bests.

So I'd say it is important to include the last-modification-date in whatever form the record board is going to be presented.

We have two boards (1 for boys and 1 for girls' records) that have the events permanently painted on. The boys' board has yard and metric races because our school has a long history of good marks going way back. Both boards are mounted on the wall as you enter the gymnasium. The cardboard boards with the individual record marks slide in behind some plastic sliders that are affixed to the wooden board. We use a professional sign printer redo those record boards when they are broken so everything looks pretty uniform.

Have you thought about PowerPoint?

Great idea coach. The kids will love it.

Way back when, I got permission from the administration to put T&F records on the cafeteria wall. My thought was that they would be in a place where most of the students saw them daily. I took 1 by 4 inexpensive fir slats, made them 2 feet long, and hung the top five school efforts under the each event. During the season, anytime a new top five was achieved, I would router the name and time in a new board and have it up the next day in the cafeteria. I think it turn out to be one of the best motivational/recruiting ideas I even had. Thirty years later, athletes still ask about their boards. (I am LONG gone from coaching)

Check these guys out. These ones can be sponsored so you can get local businesses to pay for it and it looks really good not just some excel spread sheet no one can see.

Needs to be something prominent on the wall in the locker room that forces people to look up to see it. I still remember looking in awe at the times at my HS, most set 10-20 years earlier. It is good if it is easily updateable.

The boards from the link above are what I’m looking to make. The sponsors are a great idea, but like I said very small school not a lot of places around to ask for sponsors.

“Old Coach” you’ve got the idea I’m going for. Excel and powerpoint are nice but I want something for everyone to see. I’m thinking of painting plywood and somehow putting up name plates. Again I want to keep the cost as low as possible but still make it look nice.

Thanks

My old school had a giant piece of plywood painted with school colors in the workout room wall(weights, bikes and other related stuff, not the gym itself). Thing was pretty old and names and times were put on smaller pieces of plywood and hung on the giant piece. If someone broke a record, it was taken off and re-stenciled. Gives kids something to strive for.

The first school I coached at had something like what you are thinking. They had a finished plywood piece as a base, then the individual records were wood strips with the athlete's name/effort painted on them. When a kid broke a record, they took down the old strip - gave it to the record breaker - and installed the new one. Apparently, it had been their tradition for some time.

One of our neighboring schools back then had a painted plywood sheet that hung right at the entrance to their track. They just painted over the old record when it was broken.

Our current board is something like these:

https://www.schooloutfitters.com/catalog/default?cPath=CAT385_CAT36&s_kwcid=TC%7C6210%7Cletter%20boards%7C%7CS%7C%7C2609887967

Alumni from our school chipped in to pay for it.

I'd go with your plan to paint it and put up name plates or little print outs listing time, year and name. Maybe if you design it so that it is easily updated kids will believe that they have a chance at getting on the board. Will it show just the school record or an all time list?

Once you make it you better find a way to easily change the names because records will start to be broken left and right. Good kids will find a way to break records if they aim for them.

It’s just going to be school records. I don’t have the All-time list. Maybe after I’m around a few more years I can post a list of what I have. Thanks for all the feedback.

try imagemaker - excellent product ... imagemaker4u.com

Start an all-time list. A top 10 would be great, it gives the slower guys motivation.

We had one in high school and everyone loved it, we'd study it all the time and think about what we could do to get on it.

The new coach came and refused to let us hang it up, big asshole. The team is now dead last in the league and I'm not surprised.

The old top 10 list was just a computerized printout, our coach kept track of everything and posted a new printout whenever something changed.

He also gave us printed results of our performances at track meets so we could see everyone's splits and how they did. Big motivation for me to see the fastest guy on our team running such fast times.