ALEXANDRIA — This spring, the Alexandria School District, in partnership with Cardinal Athletic Foundation, will debut a large outdoor video board at the Alexandria Area High School Viking Bank Stadium.
The multipurpose, fully digital interactive screen will allow for student-created content that can be used by community partners for advertising. The video board has the capability of showing replays of the action on the field but the district has not yet determined if replays will be played during games.
Student-driven
In 2019, AAHS students Ethan Patience and Anna Zwilling came up with the idea/project as part of a senior CAPS (Business/College Principles of Marketing) class.
Sam Steidl and Andrea Tripp, board members of Cardinal Athletic Foundation (CAF), mentored the students and liked the idea enough to explore the feasibility.
Community partnerships
This school year, Geneva Capital, Sam and Andrea representing CAF, along with AAHS CAPS (Business/College Principles of Marketing) students Maxton Meyer, Hailie Kent, and Ryan Meuwissen, met with two different banks to select the best terms and loan product.
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CAF will purchase the video board using five-year financing terms, as well as serve in an overarching role to support students.
“We’re excited about the partnership with the school district and the opportunity to support these experiences for students,” said Sam Steidl, board member of the Cardinal Athletic Foundation. “Students will produce corporate commercials to be played on the digital board, spotlighting local companies and improving spectator engagement and the fan experience.”
Timeline for installation
The video board will be installed in time for AAHS to host the section track meet on June 4. This spring semester, 17 students in the M-2 Digital Marketing and Community Promotions course at AAHS are partnering with area businesses on advertising.
Those final unit projects will debut when the video board is installed.
New real-world, authentic learning experiences
In the 2022-23 school year and beyond, students will help with production aspects through authentic, real-world experiences in the following coursework:
- CAPS (Business/College Principles of Marketing) students will be in charge of pitching to potential advertisers. These students are highly skilled in marketing.
- Video Production students will create the videos for advertisers to be played on the AAHS Stadium’s Video Board.
