The Prince George County School Board recognized Prince George High School's Sports Marketing program and its instructor, Mr. Travis Carr, by naming them to the Virginia School Boards Association's (VSBA) 2025 Media Honor Roll, which celebrates their commitment to showcasing Prince George County Public Schools' programs and offerings through the district's platforms.
Each year, the VSBA Media Honor Roll recognizes media representatives, including student programs, for their essential role in supporting public education in their communities through storytelling and content creation.
During the Prince George County School Board's regular meeting on Monday, September 8, 2025, Mr. Carr and members of the school's Sports Marketing program were recognized by the division's leadership, including Superintendent Dr. Wayne Lyle and Deputy Superintendent Dr. Abbie Martin. Joining Mr. Carr were some of his sports marketing students, Jackson Baird, Caroline Rothenberg, and Amelia Gardner.
About PGHS' Sports Marketing Program
Prince George High School's Sports Marketing program, part of the school's career and technical education (CTE) robust offerings and led by longtime educator Mr. Travis Carr, provides students with a practical understanding of the preparation, operation, and execution of game events, as well as coverage of high school teams and athletes.
Through this program, students serve as social media content managers for the class' "PG Royals Sports Management" Facebook page and "pghs_sportsmanagement" Instagram account, producing posts featuring Prince George High School student-athletes, coaches, and more. These students also support athletic events, including operating and managing scoreboard screen content at the school's stadium, and hosting athletic signing day experiences for their classmates as they announce their college intentions to friends and family in attendance.
In recent years, a large school-wide project led by the program was the newly created and highly successful "Royal Games," which saw the high school's sports marketing students take the lead in hosting a fun, semi-competitive activity for students and staff, including emceeing, creating, and facilitating games, and more.
Additionally, in the lead-up to the start of sports season, the sports marketing program has hosted "media day" experiences for the high school's student-athletes and coaches. Featuring backdrops, lights, and a flurry of cameras flashing, the students, who also partner with the school's Digital and Social Media Marketing program, take dozens of professional-level photos of students and coaches that will be used in various marketing materials on social media throughout the season.
"I'm very honored to lead the sports marketing program at Prince George High School," Mr. Carr said previously when discussing the program. "The field of sports is a passion of mine, so I look forward to working with my students every single day. In fact, I do not even consider it 'work.' The most enjoyable part is seeing a vision for this program and my students matching my enthusiasm for it."
Prince George County Public Schools' Public Information Officer Michael Campbell, who was also selected for inclusion on the 2025 VSBA Media Honor Roll by the Prince George County School Board for his work in showcasing the division's students, staff, and programs to the community, celebrated the success of the sports management program and highlighted the key skills this program is providing students before they ever set foot into a professional sports team's front office or down onto the field.
"Through my own experiences of working with professional sports teams and organizations at the local and national level during my career, the hands-on skills students in the sports management program at Prince George High School are receiving is placing them several steps ahead of the curve if this is something they want to pursue as a career," Campbell said of the program. "The students' passion and excitement for storytelling through their camera lenses and social media content, and their eagerness to create engagement and creative experiences for student-athletes and attendees at sporting events are the exact types of skills many collegiate and professional organizations look for in talent to grow their programs. Once they graduate, these students are able to enter many collegiate sports programs ready to dive right into the world of sports content creation and events management thanks to the dedication of Mr. Carr as an instructor, and Prince George High School as a supportive incubator that helps foster and hone their skills."
The program also serves as a conduit to connect students with some of the biggest sports franchises locally and globally. In recent years, sports marketing classes have visited the Richmond Flying Squirrels to learn more about sports team operations within the context of a game day, as well as the Washington Commanders, one of the most recognizable and valuable NFL teams in the world, a prime destination for up-and-coming sports marketing and management professionals.
The sports marketing program becomes the second student-focused program at Prince George High School to be recognized through the VSBA Media Honor Roll program. In 2023, Prince George High School's Social Media and Digital Marketing Class and its instructor, Mr. Chris Powell, was honored alongside longtime WTVR CBS 6 reporter Wayne Covil by the Prince George County School Board for excellence in public education communications and storytelling.
Later this year, VSBA will publish the Media Honor Roll in the VSBA Newsletter to recognize Mr. Carr, the sports marketing program, and those honored across Virginia through this program.
For more information about the Virginia School Boards Association, visit their website at http://vsba.org.