This is part one of a six-part storytelling series, filled with real-world examples for telling the stories of people in your athletic department

Storytelling Series: Coaches | Alumni | Donors | Staff | Fans

July 23, 2026

Welcome to our summer series highlighting different ways to tell the stories of your athletic department.

Over the next six installments, we’ll walk through storytelling ideas for every group that makes your department unique — starting with student-athletes, then moving on to coaches, alumni, donors, staff, and fans. Think of each post as a menu: ideas any communicator can run with, whether you have one sport to cover or twenty-one.

The best stories in your athletic department aren’t always in the box score. They’re in the moments before a student-athlete ever stepped on campus, in the growth that happens between seasons, and in the decisions nobody saw them make. You know this — box scores tell fans what happened, while narrative-style stories tell them why they should care. The departments that consistently tell those stories build fanbases and pipelines to recruits and donors that outlast any single season.

Storytelling is only getting more and more important. Especially in today’s modern era of college sports, where communities long for connection and want to know more about the players underneath the jersey.

So, here are five story formats for student-athletes that you can put on the calendar right now.

1. First-Year/Freshman Q&A

Every fall, your roster turns over. New faces show up on the depth chart and in the game program, but for most, they’re just names until the season starts.

The format is simple: A brief interview with each incoming student-athlete about why they chose your school, what surprised them about the transition, and what they want their first year to look like. These don’t need to be long. Five to seven questions is plenty, and the answers can run as a rolling series through August and September.

Three questions that consistently produce good answers:

1. Who on the roster has helped you settle in, and how?
2. What’s one goal you’ve set for yourself this year — on or off the field?
3. What do you want fans to know about you that they’d never guess?

Best timing: Collect responses during move-in or preseason meetings, publish through the first month of the season. Spring sports can still be handled in the fall, but can also be spring-focused with “what did you learn from your first semester?” angles.

Example: Texas Tech: “Newcomer Q&A with DaKari Spear”

2. Senior Day Letters

First-person letters from graduating seniors (or parent to seniors) reflecting on their careers. These emotional notes (to teammates, fans, or parents to player) make powerful Senior Day content. They strengthen team culture and community ties, and can be read at ceremonies or in programs.

The format is simple: Ask each graduating senior to write a first-person letter reflecting on their career — addressed to teammates, to fans, to parents, or to the program. The best ones are honest and specific: the road trip that went sideways, the injury year, the coach’s phrase that everybody jokingly loves. Another option flips the direction: letters from parents to their seniors, reflecting on the journey from youth sports to the final home game.

Three questions that consistently produce good answers:

1. What do you remember about your very first practice here?
2. What do you want the underclassmen to carry forward?
3. What will you miss the most?

Best timing: Collect at least two to three weeks before Senior Day. Publish the week of.

Example: Providence College: “Letters To Friartown”

3. “A Letter to My Younger Self”

This concept borrows from The Players’ Tribune playbook, and it works at every level of college athletics. The difference between letters to their younger self and the senior day content above is introspection. Senior day letters look outward at the program and community. Younger-self letters look inward at growth, making them more evergreen and less tied to a date on the calendar.

The format is simple: A senior (or an alum who’s now coaching) writes a letter to the freshman version of themselves. Topics include what they wish they’d known, what they worried about back then, and what they underestimated.

Three questions that consistently produce good answers:

1. What were you most nervous of your freshman year, and how did it actually turn out?
2. What’s one piece of advice you would have ignored then, but understand now?
3. If you could relive one ordinary day — no games, no ceremonies — which would it be?

Best timing: Anytime. Spring semester and graduation season are natural peaks.

Example: Idaho State: “A Letter to My Younger Self: By Madi Cicierski”

4. Walk-on Diaries

Every roster has student-athletes that made their way onto the roster through untraditional methods. They emailed the coach or showed up to an open tryout, and most fans don’t really know their story exists. These narratives emphasize grit, passion, and team culture. They also educate fans and recruits about non-traditional roster paths.

The format is simple: Structure this as a recurring series following one or more walk-ons through a season. Entries can be just a few paragraphs every couple of weeks, from covering the tryout itself, the first practice with the full team, the scout-team grind, and (when it happens) the first minutes of live game action.

Three questions that consistently produce good answers:

1. Walk me through the day of your tryout. What did you tell yourself beforehand?
2. What’s the part of being a walk-on that most people wouldn’t know?
3. What’s your favorite part of being a member of this team?

Best timing: Start in preseason with the tryout story, then publish entries throughout the season.

Example: Iowa State: “A Walk-On Life” (Jacob Lemming)

Note: This angle, especially from the first-person perspective, is a major opportunity for any department’s storytelling strategy. In a world where the House settlement removed scholarship limits in exchange for roster limits, the world of the walk-on is at risk. Telling these stories is an essential part of college sports.

5. Hometown Diaries

Every athlete on your roster is a headline waiting to happen in small newspapers across the country and the world. Hometown features connect student-athletes back to the towns, high schools, and communities that shaped them. These stories foster local pride, strengthen community relationships, and support regional recruiting (and potentially even ticket sales).

The format is simple: It profiles an athlete through the lens of where they’re from: the high school/club coach who developed them, the local rivalries, the field or gym where they put in the early work, and what it means to represent that community at the college level. This format is perfect for non-native athletes — like a tennis player from Germany or a soccer player from Brazil — allowing them to share their unique perspective and culture.

Three questions that consistently produce good answers:

1. When you go back home, what’s the first thing you do?
2. Who’s the coach in your hometown that made you the athlete you are?
3. What does it mean to you to represent your community/country here?

Best timing: Year-round. Slow content weeks are perfect for these.

Example: Northwestern College: “From Kicks to Flips: Kabongo’s Three-Sport Rise”

Note: This angle also is beneficial for garnering media with the local outlets in the athlete’s hometown. Once completed, tag local media and high school programs on social media, while also sending the link to the same media and local sports reporters whenever applicable.

Making It Repeatable

Every format above shares the same operational challenge: collecting responses. Chasing down freshmen for a Q&A or a dozen seniors for letters is where these ideas usually stall. The story concepts are easy, the logistics are the bottleneck.

That’s the problem FanWord’s Online Interviews and Feature Stories features were built to change:

• Create an Online Interview and set up questions
• Send athletes a link
• They respond on their own time from their phone via audio, video, or text
• Every answer lands in one place — no email chains, no chasing, no transcribing
• From there, one-click import into Feature Stories turns raw responses into a working draft
• Customize the voice and length of each story​
• Use our built-in review process to speed up collaboration​ with the athlete
• Your team spends its time editing and publishing instead of collecting and formatting

If you want to see how programs are running series like these at scale, we’d love to show you.

Next up in the series: Storytelling ideas for your coaches — from philosophy features to behind-the-whiteboard access.

See what FanWord can do for your communications team: 
➡️ Request a demo using the contact form below
➡️ Reach out to our CEO directly to talk through your team’s workflow