AWARD CEREMONIES – THE LAST IMPRESSION
We all work so hard on our races and are very sensitive to make sure that everything goes well. However, many times we tend to neglect the final phase of the overall event, the award ceremony. Typically, not enough time, attention or resources are committed to this part of the overall participant experience. Given that the award ceremony is the final activity of the day, don’t we all want our customers to leave with a “good taste” in their mouth? If so, many of us may need to prepare better for this “last impression”. Here are a few tips:
You need to decide if you even need a formal, full blown award ceremony. If you don’t, then don’t force it. Some races are now just awarding the overall winners and mailing out all the age group awards, thus totally eliminating the long, drawn out awards ceremony. Given that results are now being immediately posted onto the web, folks can see their results as soon as they get home (or before) and not have to wait for hours after their finish for the awards ceremony. For many who are busy, this is the more preferred way to go. Others who don’t mind sticking around rather hear their name called out and receive their award in front of their peers (whatever number of peers are remaining at that time!).
Assign a dependable person to be the Awards Ceremony Coordinator. As the Race Director, don’t do it yourself. Awards ceremony preparation sometimes starts even before the race starts that morning. To do it right takes time, planning and a small team of helpers.
Typically, there are two parts of an Awards Ceremony – all the thank you’s, short speeches and the check presentations to the charities and then the distribution of awards themselves. So folks don’t accuse you of having a long award ceremony, maybe you advertise it as two separate programs, e.g., from 10:00am to 10:30am is Race Acknowledgements and from 10:30am to 11:00am is the Award Distribution.
If you decide to go with a formal, extensive ceremony, a significant decision you need to make is in what order do you distribute the awards. Overall / elites first or age group winners first and same with other special categories. Some feel by holding off with the elite awards until the end encourages more runners to stick around longer. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t and you certainly don’t want to inconvenience your invited elite athletes to have to wait for an hour or so for their awards, either.
Number of awards: If you have 50-100+ awards to distribute, perhaps just have the overall and special category winners come up on stage and all the others report to an awards tent on the side of the stage to pick up their award, mainly to cut back on the amount of time it usually takes for winners to come out of the crowd and make their way up to the stage.
Whereas I could go on and on about many other aspects of an award ceremony, the main goals objectives should be these:
Be sure to have someone “in the know” (race referee) quickly review the results for accuracy before you announce them. One of the keys here is choosing an experienced and dependable timing company.
Don’t drag it out.
No long speeches.
Be prepared well in advance.
Start on time, end on time.
Assign a charismatic announcer but one who knows the running industry.
Keep track of those who aren’t present to receive their award (you have to decide if you will be mailing out the award or not).
Be on time, accurate, keep it moving and brief, and make it entertaining. That should go all long way in leaving a lasting impression of which you can be proud.