FC Tulsa Starts New Initiative To Help Engage Students In Classrooms

Tulsa’s professional soccer team is partnering with several schools to help engage and impact students in classrooms across the district. The FC Tulsa team is signing soccer balls and giving them to 31 different schools across the Tulsa Public Schools district to use as an incentive to keep students participating in class.

The Impact Ball Initiative is centered around a ball that will travel to different classrooms at each school like a trophy when students are showing lots of engagement in certain areas. It is up to each school to determine how the soccer ball will be passed around to each classroom.

Organizers first tried this last year at Tulsa’s McKinley Elementary to help boost attendance in classrooms and said it was a success. FC Tulsa President James Cannon is hopeful this gets even more kids excited inside and outside of school.

“To have our players and the team be able to represent incredible performance and be something of an aspiration for these young students, I think, is a great project for us,” said Cannon. “[It is] something we’re excited to support.”

Organizers are talking with other schools in the Tulsa metro and hope to expand the Impact Ball Initiative.