Im excited to see so many interesting suggestions on ideas that people do at their Relays. A lot of these I want to pass onto my Entertainment Chair and have her put some into motion. My quesiton for you all is this, we are a college relay and normally we have lots of energy going into about 1am (after our Mrs. Relay Pagnant) Afterwards, we tend to lose a lot of participation. I was wondering what activities you all do to keep people going that late at night and on the track until 7 and 8am?
We lose a lot of people around then too and are working on keeping people there later as well. Try keeping the games/contests going all night long by awarding team points that are earned from kick-off to closing ceremonies. This keeps teams in competition. I've seen things like a team-legged race (all team members have to be ties together and successfully make it all the way around the track). Have your best band play at 3am so kids want to stick around. Have pizza delivered around then too (college kids will do anything for free food). Energy drinks around this time are good too! I don't know how much your faculty participates, but if you can get a team of professors for the night, have them do something crazy like ACS Idol or something. Really just spacing the activities out and keeping the energy going really helps.
With the band thing and all, the only problem would be the whole sound laws thing-- I don't think that you can have a band play at 3 AM if you have a residential area nearby.That was our problem last year!
But those are some great ideas! I'd like to add to that playing movies all night long, or announcing winners to the contests every hour. With the movie thing, you could save a wildly popular or newer movie for early morning, so that people would stay up/ wake up to see it. You could also have some new type of contest, like radio shows do-- when you hear/ see something, the first person to "call in" (go up to someone in charge) wins a prize of some type. The sound thing would still be a problem, though.
We have had softball games that go all night. This has brought in a lot of people throughout the night--plus we raised a lot of money doing this. This year we are thinking about doing 3 on 3 basketball tournaments, as well. Someone also suggested setting up a scrapbooking tent and have that going all night so people can come and scrapbook! (That's a big thing here..)
Just out of curiosity, where exactly do you hold your relay, that people can play softball and basketball without fear of injury? It's a great idea, but I'm not seeing how you could do it, with a normal round track. Just being confused, I guess.
The park has a huge walk way around it--which is where we walk. Softball fields are at the park--as well as the basketball areas. There is also a skate park..but we're not including that in the event as one of our activities.
Joined: 2007-10-18