The United States Marine Corps identified that outstanding high school age student-athletes often exhibit personality characteristics consistent with Marine Corps values. To reinforce this cultural alignment, the Marine Corps co-developed with their agency Mindshare, and MaxPreps.com, the Semper Fidelis Athlete of the Month/Year program.
The program is designed to convey to the public the Marine Corps alignment with positive mainstream American values, including self-discipline, excellence, competitiveness, and over-coming challenges. In addition, it signs a spotlight on deserving high school athletes who are not only expectational athletes in their respective sports but serve as pillars in their community while maintaining high academics.
The program elements include:
As America's most popular sports media company dedicated exclusively to high school sports, MaxPreps has the targeted reach and credibility to execute a nomination-based awards program.
In selecting the Semper Fidelis Athlete of the Month, MaxPreps requested nominations from high school sports communities. Most often these communities consist of student-athletes, their parents, coaches and other school faculty. MaxPreps utilized its voice in the high school sports community to call for nominations to be made via MaxPreps.com. the MaxPreps App and MaxPreps social media accounts.
MaxPreps and the Marines sought nominations that revealed outstanding character traits of the "whole person,": meaning the student-athletes on-field accomplishments combined with outstanding community and/or student body involvement.
Nominations were filtered by the MaxPreps editorial staff for Marine Corps consideration. The top three nominations were then passed to the Marine Corps, along with their agency partners at Mindshare. From there, one female and one male athlete of the month was selected.
MaxPreps then contacted the school and nominees to arrange for an on-campus awards ceremony, and the production of a six-minute video telling the story of the selected athlete. The video content's intent is to reveal the story behind this student-athlete with an emphasis on the "whole person" concept."
The video was shot and produced by the team at CBS Sports Digital. A link to a sample video is provided below.
Upon completion of the video, it was debuted at the on-campus awards ceremony (for each winner), hosted by MaxPreps, local Marine Corps personnel and a notable professional or Olympic athlete. The award winner received recognition including a trophy, a custom letterman's jacket and award certificate.
The award ceremony enabled the Marines to be welcomed onto local high school campuses to form relationships with students, coaches, teachers and administrators.
In total, MaxPreps managed twenty activations and video productions on behalf of the Semper Fidelis Athlete of the Month program.
The Marine Corps and MaxPreps received nearly 20,000 nominations for Athlete of the Month during the course of the 9-month initiative which yielded 20 total award winners during the course of the past school year.
