Looking back, we remember our first experiences with spiritwear at a young age, maybe before middle school even. Yet, it started to feel cool from middle school and beyond – like it was something to pursue. We looked up to our high school role models at the football games decked out in football spiritwear and school colors from head to toe, competing for the free shirt shots into the stand and overall just having a great time. We associated high school sport spiritwear with fun, festivities, and friendship, so it became our biggest goal to get as much as we could – for all age groups.
Elementary School Sport Spiritwear
Let’s start with the little ones. They may be young, but that doesn’t mean your Pre-K-to-Grade-4 students don’t deserve some spiritwear just for them! You can make spiritwear bigger than just class or grade shirts, even when they’re only starting out at school. Fun graphics, bright colors, easy-to-read fonts – it’s all fair game! Some schools started traditions of shirt signings rather than yearbook signings, and having fun elementary school spiritwear for their classmates to sign and doodle on is such a fun idea. Sure, they’ll outgrow their shirts in a year or two, but this can make them more memorable and sentimental down the line.
Plus, younger kids love to find themselves matching with their classmates, as it gives them an automatic friend for the day while they’re getting used to constant classroom socialization. They’ll think it’s cool that someone else has the same shirt as them, whereas accidental matching isn’t so cool once they grow up.
Middle School Sport Spiritwear
It’s not as typical in middle school to have the same volume of pep rallies and school-encouraged event attendance, but you typically knew what was up when it came to games and championships. In “collect-it-all” fashion, however, schools often hand out spiritwear shirts like candy, whether it be class shirts, club shirts, grade shirts, field trip shirts, athletics shirts, or prizes for fundraisers and class competitions. If you went out looking for middle school sport spiritwear, you’d find it.
Even though your football spiritwear, basketball spiritwear, and beyond will multiply as you (or your child) progress through junior high and high school, don’t toss out the old just yet. There are several ways to repurpose old spiritwear, which we’ll get to in a second.
Junior High Sport Spiritwear
Junior high means something different for everyone nowadays. From housing a few grades to possibly just one, junior high is when things start to get more fun. This is when students are introduced to spirit weeks and more high school and junior high sports games. This is when steller athletes can make it to the JV teams, and those games tend to feel more legit than anything thus far (especially if you haven’t made it to an HS game yet). You may even see a pep rally or two, depending on how many students in your junior high take part in various athletic (or hey, even academic) activities.
Often, junior high sport spiritwear is more reminiscent of high school designs, maybe using less youthful slogans, fonts, and graphics than anything you’d see in the younger grades. This makes the junior high designs more likely to transcend into high school, at least for a little bit before they collect their spiritwear from high school clubs, sports events, and other activities.
High School Sport Spiritwear
You’ve made it to the main event!
High school is where it’s at in terms of school pride, participating in school events, and figuring out your young adult identity through clubs, organizations, and electives. There’s pretty much something going on every day of the week, regardless of what season it is – you just have to know where to look. If there’s not a club or organization for it yet, now’s the time to start your own! (Awesome application addition or resume builder, by the way.)
It’s always a big thing for school athletics committees to fundraise by using football spiritwear, basketball spiritwear, track spiritwear, baseball spiritwear, and so forth before the seasons commence. If the team makes it to the championships, there’s definitely more sport spiritwear to come. It’s a fun end-of-year (or graduation!) activity to round up all your school spirit shirts to see how many you collected over the years, and high school athletics really add a spike to that number.
It’s not all about athletics and clubs, however; in some high schools across the country, there’s an unspoken tradition during AP testing season for individual classes to design their own shirts to wear into the test as a sign of class pride, which is a more niche take on school spiritwear. You can’t gloss over the academics – they’ve got their pride, too!
Don’t Discount Hand-Me-Down High School Sport Spiritwear
Parents, do your kids have older siblings with spiritwear in boxes? The same goes for the students – do your older brothers or sisters have spiritwear just lying around? Shake off the dust and let them see the light of day! If you’re wanting to stand out or show off your swag, “vintage” spiritwear is a fun way to go (and a great way to recycle middle school sport spiritwear and junior high sport spiritwear). It can highlight your family legacy at the school if you’ve been a “lifer” or simply shake things up from the school spirit shirts everyone your age has.
If you don’t have them, don’t worry! Everyone’s legacy has to start with someone.
What to Do with All Those Extra Shirts
As a parting thought, we wanted to encourage everyone to keep their keepsakes around for some heartwarming DIY projects. The go-to is a quick T-shirt quilt because you’ll have plenty of material to pull from. (We know of parents who like to do this as a graduation gift when their kid moves on to college or the workforce.) Similarly, you can turn your favorites into pillows.
If you want to do away with them all together but have them fall into the right hands, you can always donate them at school clothing drives (where they’ll be hot ticket items for sure!) or simply repurpose them into workout shirts, aprons, pajama pants, or even baby clothes.
Whatever You Decide to Do, Do It with 1st Place Spiritwear
At 1st Place Spiritwear, we carry high-quality school spiritwear for everyone in your family – whether you’re a parent or a student-to-be. We not only carry the widest selection of school spiritwear for schools across the nation, but we offer unique virtual fundraising that’s streamlined, no matter how big or small the campaign. We carry 150+ unique spiritwear designs for all schools, and with all those design options, there’s something for everyone!
We sought out to make spiritwear you want to wear, utilizing the highest quality fabrics, original (and cool!) designs by leading T-shirt graphic designers, and easy ordering software with no minimum orders or catches. We didn’t want to be the cheapest option available because that tends to mean cutting corners somewhere, so instead, we sought out to be the best spiritwear company out there.
