“The new Boosters.” This is the term sophomore Lexi Bottern uses to describe the future of St. Paul Academy and Summit School’s Thursday student sports group, Spartan Boosters. Bottern and other leaders of Spartan Boosters are hoping for the group undergo a transformation this year, increasing productivity, gathering money to sponsor events, and “be a big deal,” according to Bottern. “We’re trying to take on this huge role, and its been kind of a joke in the past. We’re doing a lot to change it,” Bottern said.

“We have a lot of ideas, and we’re still trying to figure out how to get a solid, organized group going,” Bottern said. Some of these ideas include having halftime shows, cheering louder at sporting events, selling spirit wear, and extending school spirit to a yearlong phenomenon. Already, boosters has put some of their plans into action, with the help of athletic director Jens Sawkins, who has been sending out emails with sports updates and upcoming events, in addition to meeting with Boosters’ student leaders to discuss how to make the group more successful.

One of the most notable of these resolutions put into actions is the weekly announcements of a male and female athlete of the week during Friday assemblies. These athletes of the week also get their picture put up on the Spartan Boosters board in the history hallway. “It’s exciting when you do well in sports, and being acknowledged in front of everyone, that’s exciting. Everyone hears about it. In recognition assemblies, teachers go up and acknowledge debaters, and academic things, and how those are big deals, but athlete of the week  is going to show that if you do your sport well, people will recognize it. It’s exciting, and it’s good for your school,” Bottern said.

The steps taken to choose just two out of hundreds of student athletes per week are currently undefined and simple, but Bottern hopes to make it a more distinct process as the year advances. “Right now we’re just doing it based off of what people in the group say, so we have a mix of about thirty kids who play a mix of sports, so if someone comes to us during our thursday group and says that so and so did awesome, we’re just like ‘okay, we’ll just do that,’” Bottern said. Moving forward, Spartan Boosters hopes to use individual sport captain and coach input to choose an athlete of the week. Now that we’re paying attention to sports throughout the entire week and not just the weekend, we’re finding and recording who’s doing well, but it would help a lot if captains and coaches submitted people,” Bottern said.

Not only is it hard to choose an individual athlete per sport every week, it’s also hard choosing only one sport’s athlete every week to be recognized. “Last year, it was just doing the big sports that everyone goes to, like soccer, football, basketball, hockey, and baseball. Whoever made the biggest name,” Bottern said. Moving forward, they want to choose between sports based on how successful the team was that week, while also smaller details into consideration. Sometimes it’s going to be someone who got first place and won the game, but sometimes it’s going to be someone who had, for example, scored a goal in their first varsity game, “because they only get one first game,” Bottern described.

Athlete of the week photos are not all that get hung up on the Spartan Boosters board, however. To emphasize their dedication to a “new Boosters”, they have their mission statement posted, too, to show that Boosters wants to “go out and support and strengthen the spirit of things,” Bottern said. Their mission statement reads simply: promoting and strengthening the Spartan athletic spirit.