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By: Riverdale High School - April 20, 2007 - 10:14 p.m.
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Riverdale High School athletic director Micheal Burt has announced the release of a brand position statement for the school's athletic department.
The brand position statement, which Burt said was created to publicly communicate the values and philosophy of Riverdale athletics, was developed in conjunction with Dr. Colby Jubenville and Dr. Don Roy, both professors at MTSU and partners in the firm Tennsight Marketing.
Burt, who also serves as the head coach of the Riverdale girls basketball team, noted, "Riverdale Athletics is becoming recognized throughout the Southeast as a premier high school athletic program and a standard by which all others are measured," he said, "and we've generated too much positive momentum to settle for second best.
"What we sought to do by creating the brand position statement was to cement the role of interscholastic athletics as a central component of the education delivery process at Riverdale High School."
Burt further stated that the need for such an endeavor had become clearer to him and the entire Riverdale Athletics staff of coaches as they saw the clear necessity for direction and purpose for their sports programs amid the rapidly developing Murfreesboro community.
"High school sports can unquestionably provide much of the glue that holds a community together," he said.
"What we needed to do was to develop a mechanism that did three things for us."
First, Burt said, the Riverdale coaches needed a unified framework that would allow them to successfully develop the teams they coach despite the daunting tasks they face.
"Though challenged more than ever, coaches must still find ways to not only cope but succeed in their sports programs," Burt said, "yet they're often turned loose with no clear directive by which to manage. That's one thing we wanted to prevent for our coaches."
Second, Burt noted that the brand position statement would give administrators a similarly clear-cut context within which they could manage interscholastic athletics as part of the student extracurricular learning experience.
"We all rightfully know and say how important sports programs are for our students, but it's easy for each one of us to produce different answers when we try to place high school sports in their proper context within the school system," he said.
"Our brand position statement clearly states the promise Riverdale Athletics makes to the school and how we're supposed to deliver it."
Third, Burt said that the brand position statement seeks to engage the community as a vested partner in the educational process by providing affinity and fulfillment to citizens of Rutherford County.
"I think it's tough to argue that all residents of any community experience a greater quality of life when they have the opportunity to bond with an area high school sports program through increased loyalty, involvement, and identification," he said.
"Our brand position statement lets them know that there's a place for them to belong at Riverdale High School, and we want to build that affinity one person, one relationship, and one friendship at a time."
While Burt said he felt like Riverdale's culture was generally understood and accepted by the Rutherford County community, he added that the brand position statement allowed Riverdale athletics to frame its values into a philosophy that will permit it to craft a clear vision, an effective mission, and goals and objectives that will allow Warrior sports programs to progress successfully into the future.
"At Riverdale, the coaches, players, and boosters have helped to build an athletic program that believes in achievement, purpose, and championships," Burt said.
"The life skills taught to these young men and women and modeled by their leaders in sports programs will help equip them with the skills and tools to go into the world and become productive citizens in a knowledge-worker society."
Burt began work on this initiative last September.
Seeking to keep in step with what he perceived as a vibrant, progressive Rutherford County community, Burt said, "I knew that Riverdale Athletics needed to take that next step, but I wasn't quite sure exactly how to start it."
He then contacted Jubenville, coordinator of the graduate sport management program at MTSU, who ironically was looking for a way to connect the theory he teaches in his graduate Sport Management course with a practical application in the sport industry.
"Part of the course focused on leveraging brands and developing a brand position statement, which expresses exactly what the public should know about a brand, as the ideal place where an organization should begin to develop its marketing efforts," Jubenville said.
Jubenville first assigned the Riverdale project to four of his students in the course and supervised and directed their progress, providing numerous adjustments and revisions along the way.
"Interestingly enough, the students who worked on this project were all former high school football players who understood that side of it," he said, "and the results reflected their understanding of how to apply what they learned in the classroom to a real-world sport industry problem."
Their ideas centered upon Riverdale's desire to utilize its past success to shape a brilliant future, specifically around the concept "Tradition Never Graduates."
The statement also emphasized the relationship Riverdale athletics has with the Rutherford County community and highlighted the function of Warrior sports teams to connect to, reflect, and shape the culture of the community, as well as the effects that the community has on shaping the Riverdale culture and tradition.
However, what Burt and Jubenville soon realized was that, in addition to creating a foundation that would allow Riverdale Athletics to successfully manage itself, the platform that had been built was also a perfect opportunity to create partnerships with stakeholder groups that would leave a lasting impact on the school and the community.
Realizing the magnitude of the opportunity, Burt and Jubenville decided to explore it further and enlisted the help of Roy, an MTSU marketing professor who specializes in branding and consumerism research, to add the complex finishing touches as a consultant.
"What needed to be done was to look for a new way to package high school sports, which have evolved into an affinity group," Roy said.
"We didn't want to define Riverdale's new platform as something that was purely marketing-related, because legitimate concerns about the over-commercialization of education do exist," Jubenville said.
"Nor did we want to approach the corporate world to support yet another pointless philanthropic effort that would only give them a sign on the outfield fence and one article in the newspaper about how nice it was that they did that for Riverdale," he added, "because they've certainly been there, done that."
According to Jubenville, high school partnerships afford companies the chance to build long-term relationships with consumers by tapping into their passions on their terms and connecting to them through their affinity for high school sports.
"To create a genuine experience that engages consumers, a brand must be prepared not only to identify itself with the passions of its consumers, but it must also be prepared to demonstrate its own passion," added Roy.
Burt, Jubenville and Roy all expressed their pleasure with the final outcome.
"Our brand position statement will help us continue the Riverdale tradition and reflect a shared vision," Burt said.
From an administrator's perspective, Riverdale Principal Tom Nolan also articulated his approval for the brand position statement.
"Riverdale High School athletics is built on traditions of purpose, achievement, and championship thinking," Nolan said, "and our brand position statement will no doubt boost us in an ongoing effort to continue our pursuit of excellence."
Nolan also noted his appreciation for the efforts of Burt, Jubenville, and Roy.
"Essentially, our brand position statement is the product of the work of three visionaries who have re-imagined and redefined the future of high school sports," Nolan said, "and they did it in a way that will dramatically benefit everyone."
"There's no reason why every high school in the state or even the country shouldn't take a look at doing this same thing with them (Tennsight)."
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