The Sports Leadership class, originally proposed by Football Coach Matt Cross, focuses primarily on athletics and what it can do for the sports program at the school.  Since SGA provides endless activities for students to enjoy with the ultimate goal being to make the school a more fun and lively environment for the students, the Sports Leadership class is similar to SGA in its intent.

After the development of the class back in October of 2012, many athletic-related projects have been completed under their name, such as the creation of the twitter page ‘Ramletics’ and the class’s YouTube channel. They also created a beautification project of the school’s facilities, hence all the construction on the fields in the beginning of the school year. This involved painting the stairs that lead up to the football field, as well as printing the word “RAMS” onto the ground by the Oasis. All of the events and projects done by the Sports Leadership class are student run and student proposed.  Jeff Ferrell, Director of Student Activities has had a lot of involvement in the Sports Leadership class since Coach Cross approached him with the idea for the class after conferring with several other schools’ Directors from the area, and finds the class to be very useful.

“One of the biggest things that they do is on Twitter. I could follow our sports, you know if I was here [in the Field House] for a gymnastics meet and our wrestlers were somewhere else, I could follow along if someone were at the venue tweeting it out,” Ferrell said.

Their twitter feed ‘Ramletics’ is constantly full of sports updates for the school as well as informing the students of games and upcoming events relating to athletics. There are also many congratulatory tweets about athletes who have accomplished something in their sport.

“With the Twitter and Facebook mainly being done out of school, students are brainstorming and generating ways and ideas to continue to make Robinson the Home of Champions,” Cross said. “I guess you could say it is similar to SGA with the athletic focus.”

The Sports Leadership class was created with the intent of making students model citizens, as well as giving them education about sports marketing and helping students get involved in the activities around the school.

“The class was designed to drive student involvement at all athletic events.  We wanted to get the entire Robinson community excited about everything Robinson has to offer,” Cross said. “The students are going to get out atoledo.com of it what they put into it.”

Since some electives have had difficulty in terms of enrollment, classes like Study of Shakespeare and IB Philosophy have been cut from the scheduling next year. There have been concerns that the Sports Leadership class may not make it next year either. However, Cross received an early roster with 30 students that have signed up for the 2013-2014 school year. For next year, Cross is ready to help the Athletic Department as much as possible and help students get involved in the class and in the school.

“They [the Athletic Department] were doing fine on their own, but there is always room to improve in whatever you do,” Cross said. “There are some ideas that have been generated for next year. There are so many people that need to be included on important decisions. Some ideas we had this year weren”t approved. One of our fundraisers this year was the RAM RAGS. It proved to be successful and one that we will continue to do.”

Overall, the Sports Leadership class has completed a lot of projects for the school, such as the beautification of the fields, as well as the creation of their twitter page, their YouTube channel and their Facebook page. With ideas already being generated for next year, 30 students ready to take on the class and an effective fundraiser already completed and looking to continue, the Sports Leadership class looks to be successful in the next school year to come.