WFMW - Documenting Athletic Events for Kids

This fall two of my teenage sons played football. One played for the freshman team and the other, a sophomore, played for the Junior Varsity and Varsity teams. At times they both had games on the same night but different parts of the City. Most weeks we were gone three nights a week to games either at home or away. Some nights I had a hard time remembering which child I was watching and my saving grace was thankfully they had totally different numbers.

I really wanted to document their football season so that I could at a later date scrapbook all the pictures and add journaling. What really worked for me was to take a picture after each game of the scoreboard. Either that night or the next morning I would write up a synopsis of what happened and especially if one of our boys had a great play and his name was called out over the loud speaker I would add what he had done. I also went to the website for the football team and snagged the write up by the coach. I placed this information into a Word file with the name of the child and the date of the game. I also created a football folder and within that folder had subfolders for each boy. As I typed this up I would file it into the corresponding folder. I also linked to any articles that were in our local paper and dropped them into the folder as well so I could match up the actual clipping with the correct child. I created the same folders to hold the pictures that were taken of each son.

Looking back now I have a great history of each game, the score, specific plays that our boys participated in plus the pictures that go along with each. It sounds very confusing but believe me it is not (see example below). I am excited to have the chance to give each son a disc of all this information one day. I have also added film from the coaches and a couple of slide shows that were shown at the football banquet two weeks ago. It has been a breeze to journal their pages. Our son that is a freshman in high school went on to be undefeated this year. I am very happy that I kept such detailed records so that I can document this feat that has not happened in our school district since my brother played for the same school nearly 25 years ago! Works for me! To see more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, visit Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer.
Example:
Football 2007 Folder
Seth football2007 Folder – write ups, journaling, newspapers
Sethpictures2007 Folder
Zach football2007 Folder – write ups, journaling, newspapers
Zachpictures2007 Folder