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Old 02-01-2023, 07:12 AM   #1499
Breeze
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL
Conference Championship Update

As I'm sure you recall from an earlier post, the Berry swim team basically had no budget for the '22-'23 season. This lack of funding forced the team to train at the school over the Christmas break rather than travel to Florida. It also means that the swimmers won't be getting the typical SWAG heading into conference.

At the winter break the team did receive a swim suit, which they will use for warm ups, as the suits aren't designed for competition. They also received a long sleeve t-shirt. This is a pretty small offering, but at least it's something. The kids will also get a competition suit for the meet, but the parents are chipping in a large portion of that cost.

Finally, the team mother typically coordinates getting something else for the swimmers that is conference related. Last year, they got really great wind breakers. Given there was basically no budget for this, the parents had indicated they would pitch in so the kids could get something. Unfortunately, the initial team mom, was Hunter's and he quit the team, then the next mom that stepped up, dropped the ball. In fact, we are concerned that she may have dropped the ball so significantly that the kids might have issues just having snacks on hand during the meet.

When we finally were forwarded the email from the team mom (as we weren't originally copied on it for some reason), the wife and I decided to see if we could get something done for the team. Cathy has a friend who is big into making T-shirts, embroidery, glass etching, etc., so we asked her to help. Since we are purchasing stuff for about 50 people, and having to get them updated to represent Berry, we were faced with 4 issues.

First, what should we get? They have a new long sleeve T-shirt. They got a windbreaker last year. We wanted to come up with something useful and different, but that leads to problem number 2...

Second issue is cost. 50 of anything can get pretty expensive. So what can we buy?

Our third issue was branding. We were initially planning to just do block lettering or some general pattern to note the school on the SWAG, but if we do it, Berry wants to maintain their branding. I get it, they've paid a bunch of money and worked hard to build the brand (and it is a great logo), but that makes our 4th issue worse...

Finally, we are dealing with a very tight window to get anything done. Given the meet starts on 2/8, we have less than a week to get the stuff, get the branding approved, brand it, and get it to the kids before the start of the meet.

Ultimately, what we elected to do was stocking caps. We have purchased 50 gray stocking caps and the plan currently was to sew on a Berry patch with the B that's used on their football helmet. We are still waiting on approval of that design and the receipt of the patches (looks like I might be making a trip over and back to pick them up if this is how we end up going). I know it's not much, but at least it's something, and it is something that swimmers will wear on the pool deck.

In addition, to the money we've spent on the swim caps, given that this is Bear's final season, we wanted to give the seniors something as well. They will be receiving the oar with their name on it (a standard gift for the last few years, which goes with the Berry "we all row" tag line). However, the seniors would typically also receive some SWAG that noted Berry Alumni. For this gift we got gray towels and will be embroidering the Berry Alumni on it (we hope - as we still have the Berry approval and time limitations. But hey we already bought the towels).

Will keep you updated on our progress.

Last edited by Breeze : 02-01-2023 at 07:13 AM.
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