Girls Varsity Soccer Head Coach Melissa VanGorden sent an email communication to all girls at ROHS on October 7th to draw attention to the girls soccer team, offer information for anyone possibly interested in playing, and encourage new players to contact her. This strategy is new to ROHS students, as most have never received a mass email that was not from an administrator.
Coaches can not easily reach out to ROHS students through email, unless they are registered on final forms. This raises difficulty for coaches to get information out about their sport. VanGorden said she wanted to get information about girls soccer out to as many people as possible. Before this new method of mass emails, VanGorden said she raised awareness about the team by posting many fliers around the school and had an announcement played over the PA on the Raven Report. The problem with those methods, according to VanGorden, is that not every teacher plays the live broadcast of the Raven Report, and not everyone pays attention to the fliers up around the school. She also puts out posts on social media, but not everyone has access to it.
VanGorden needed a quick and effective way to get information out to as many people at once as possible. Almost everyone in the school checks their email, and they would see that email in their inbox.
“With making sure it would get to every student, it was just easier to send an email out to give everybody a heads up, so that I don’t miss anybody that might be interested,” said VanGorden.
This new form of communication is effective in spreading information and awareness about upcoming events, but time will tell if it will it be effective in recruiting new students.
