Coppell High School is a public high school located in Coppell, Texas. The school is home to 16 boys and girls varsity sports teams — the Cowboys and Cowgirls — for its 4,000-strong student body. In 2022, the girls athletic coordinator and statistics teacher, Roxanne Long, was tasked with managing the athletic program’s under-developed social media presence, and modernizing it to meet current demands.
While neighboring schools had dedicated staff for marketing and communications, this was new territory for Coppell. What's more, the world of social media was entirely new to Roxanne.
"We were pretty far behind, like a lot of schools are. Social media kind of hit us like a Mack truck. And now WHAM it's a full time job!"
Building a social media presence for the athletic department from scratch wouldn't be easy, but Roxanne quickly identified key areas for improvement:
• Make posting more regular
• Bring cohesion to the content
• Use tools to streamline the process
Roxanne knew that social media success depended on having content to share. But at Coppell, even simple things like game scores, let alone photos and video, were only being posted when an athletic admin happened to be at a game — and only to Twitter.
Additionally, when posts did go up, teams were posting their own content. And it all looked a little different from team to team.
"Baseball had some wild and awesome stuff going on, but other teams had nothing. You couldn't even find a score. It quickly occurred to me that we can't be at every game."
Capitalizing on her collegiate sports background, Roxanne formed a sports information internship (SII) program, where every coach picked a student or manager to cover each game. The result? Content poured in, and a regular posting structure soon followed.
With content capture secured, next was making it all look consistently good. That’s where Gipper helped.
“Our program felt spliced before Gipper. Now it feels cohesive, because the graphics look similar and there’s a similar order to what gets posted and when.”
Roxanne can now seamlessly create and post to several social channels herself.
“You don't have to major in marketing or graphic design to be a good graphic builder. Having pre-built templates that make kids look like superstars saves us a gigantic amount of time and gigantic amounts of money.”
“And Gipper's graphics make me look like a superstar. I get feedback all the time from kids and parents and coaches: ‘Oh, that's a super cool graphic."
Since taking on her new role and using Gipper, Roxanne has seen exponential growth in social media traffic. In fact, followership on Instagram increased from 200 in 2022 to over 1,300 in just a year — a 500% increase!
“Traffic is up. People use and steal posts and graphics all the time to share on their own feeds. Our students and coaches feel more valued.”
Above all, Roxanne plans for even more social media growth, and her success has unlocked a career trajectory she wouldn’t have believed possible a short time ago.
“Now I love the role. Kids and athletes are working hard to become great people, great athletes, and adults. That’s why I’ve been a teacher and coach because I love to see them grow. And it’s the only way they truly communicate. That’s how they feel valued and how the coaches feel valued. And it pulls on my heartstrings. This is a fantastic job!”
