Program Ideas for
NCAAW

Up All-Nighter!
Many campuses are taking advantage of late night student hours and the availability of their athletic facilities to plan highly interactive programs. Take over your fitness center for midnight volleyball tournaments, indoor mini-golf, Olympic type games, swimming contests, or a variety of recreational sports events! This is a great way to involve your physical education department or health education. In addition to the fun activities, you can set up a massage clinic, serve a healthy midnight breakfast, and teach some relaxation techniques. Get students to form teams from their campus organization or residence hall. Get a celebrity student team to compete against faculty!

Take Aim at Alcohol Abuse
Get your entire campus involved by sending out colorful 8.5 x 11 flyers with a statistic about alcohol abuse on one side and an entry blank and instructions on the opposite side. Instructions should direct people to memorize their fact, complete the entry form, make a paper airplane from their flyer, and meet at a certain location. If you have a multi-level building with a balcony, this would be your best spot, or anywhere that is highly visible. Create a colorful target area in the center of the room and ask contestants to recite the statistic they received and fly their plane toward the target. Of course, there should be good prizes for those who get closest to the target. This is a great way to get everyone on campus involved and helps you get important educational messages out.

The Great Tailgate Tent Party
Combat the negative images of tailgating by sponsoring a fun non-alcoholic event during one of your major athletic games. This event is perfect to seek donations and sponsors. Get your members to whip up some great mocktails, serve hot chocolate or specialty coffees if it's cold. Ask for pizza or sub sponsors to provide food. Pass out freebie promotional items if budget allows and make sure you have educational information about impaired driving available. Invite the crash dummies to serve or to go through the stands to attract an audience at your event.

Passport Party
Have various campus resource offices and organizations set up information and refreshments in each of their areas. Issue passports to students and guide maps that indicate where they must "travel" to collect information and goodies, and get their passports stamped. It's a great way to point out campus resources, and fun to have a progressive party. All stamped passports should be thrown in to a bin for a grand prize drawing at the conclusion of the event.

Parking Lot Campaigns
Select a well-traveled parking lot as a site to launch an awareness campaign! Create a "Top Ten Reasons to Be Aware!" list and distribute it on car windshields or antennae. You may even decide to wash the car windshields so that car owners "can clearly see the importance of NCAAW". Get campus safety involved and do seat belt checks and pass out promotional items as prizes for those who are buckled up. Distribute your educational materials in the size, shape, and color of your campus parking tickets; people will read it. Include a 10% off coupon from your campus bookstore or snack bar on the ticket.

Singing Telegrams/Balloon Bouquets
Get some balloons imprinted with your NCAAW theme and take orders for balloon bouquets, or if your group is very creative, singing telegrams. This is a great way to fundraise as well as get your message across. Get your items like helium, balloons, and string donated. Design healthy messages to attach to the bouquets. Ask dining services to donate free drink coupons to attach. If singing is your bag, come up with several healthy message songs to popular tunes and send out the quartet to deliver.
(Hint: Get the person buying the telegram to designate the time and place of delivery to save time in filling your requests.)

Talk Shows!
What about staging your own "Lovelines" talk show! Get peer educators to play various outrageous roles and use a call-in line to explore issues like healthy practices, relationships and personal ethics. Remember! Lots of scandal, confrontation and surprises. It helps if you have a really funny show host. This is a great activity to do in residence hall lounges, and you can do it for many small audiences throughout your NCAAW. Another format might be to use the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" game to relay alcohol abuse information and encourage participation in a fun way!

Homecoming Halftime
Get on the program and plan some wacky team competition for half-time at the homecoming game, or make a parade float. You have a captive audience and a highly visible event to get your group's name and message out there!

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