Kings Junior High students showcase sports-management elective and student-run athletics media

Kings Junior High students and staff presented projects Tuesday night that school leaders say demonstrate the district’s emphasis on "student voice" and career-connected learning.

Assistant Principal Caleb Keaton described the new sports management and business elective as an initiative to expose students to careers tied to athletics while building the district’s so-called Power 5 skills. "We were looking at some of our data with our electives and our requests... and we came up with this sports entrepreneurship or sports management and business class," Keaton said, describing the class as an "extra PE elective" that has become the most requested junior-high elective.

Dylan McKinney, who teaches the course, said the class covers topics such as coaching, sports marketing, agency work, broadcasting and journalism and is designed to prepare students for further coursework at the high school level. "If you're not gonna be the athlete and you love sports... what other jobs and careers can you get into?" McKinney said. He told the board he currently teaches four bells of the class with 83 students enrolled this semester, "a majority being seventh graders."

Students described hands-on assignments that connected classroom instruction to real-world skills. Genevieve Lake said a journalism project asked students to analyze the underdog story in the film Miracle and write an article using textual evidence. Ellie Beckerly explained a coaching portfolio assignment that included a practice plan and a game-day speech; she described motivating a semifinal team after an injury as part of her speech exercise. Lucas Hogan and other students recounted field trips to a stadium that exposed them to pressbox operations and game-day media, while entrepreneurship pitches included product prototypes and app concepts developed in a Shark-Tank–style presentation.

McKinney also described a student-run Kings Junior High athletics Instagram account "run by Kings Junior High students" that features game recaps, video highlights and weekly updates. "Everything you see on this account is made by students. The only thing I am doing is posting it," he said, adding that the account is intended to promote school spirit and provide authentic learning experiences in media production.

District leaders framed the presentation as part of a broader strategy. Superintendent/administrator Mister Sears and other board members praised the students’ work and discussed a desire for a "high-school connector class" so junior-high students could continue developing skills at the high school level. "We want student voice to be evident in everything we do," Sears said, and board members commended teachers and students for the hands-on approach.

What happens next: the district said the junior-high work will inform future instructional planning and possible high-school course connections; Columbia Junior High is scheduled to present at the board’s January meeting.