08/31/15 – HYPE Student Leadership Conference This Week in Lexington, Bowling Green

August 31, 2015 2015-2016 News Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 31, 2015

The 15th Annual HYPE KHSAA Student Leadership Conference will take place this week in Lexington and Bowling Green. The conference is a free service provided by the Association for student-athletes to learn teamwork exercises and sportsmanship initiatives, and discuss current issues.

The first half of the conference will be held Tuesday, Sept. 1 at the Lexington Convention Center, followed by the second seminar on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at the Knicely Conference Center in Bowling Green. This year’s conference will have the added benefit of contributions from a group of six student-athletes that represented the KHSAA at the NFHS National Student Leadership Summit in July: Hunter Wood (Pendleton County), Caleb Covington (Scott County), Trenton Fryman (North Oldham), Clayton Stovall (Muhlenberg County), Hannah Bandura (Rowan County), Madison Wirth (Pendleton County). In addition to helping facilitate this year’s conference, the group will help plan the 2016 HYPE Student Leadership Conference.

Topics for this year’s breakout sessions include seminars on Digital Identity (Omari Pearson), Leadership Safety (Brad Franklin, Kentucky Office of Highway Safety), Leadership (MSG Michael Brown, Kentucky National Guard) and Team Building (Kara Mattingly, Asbury University). This year’s keynote speaker will be Stephen Bargatze (The Magic of Stephen).

“We are one of about twenty-five states that conduct a similar student conference, but one of only a handful that provide the service free of charge,” said Associate Commissioner Butch Cope. “We try to provide activities and sessions that students can take back and put to use at their school and on their specific teams.”

The conference is free to attendees and primarily funded with the receipts from the Association’s corporate sponsor program. More than 600 student-athletes attended the two-day session last year. The 2015 HYPE Student Leadership Conference marks the fifth summit since the event was split into two meetings to better accommodate students across the Commonwealth.

– KHSAA –

About the Kentucky High School Athletic Association
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association was organized in 1917 and is the agency designated by the Kentucky Department of Education to manage high school athletics in the Commonwealth. The Association is a voluntary nonprofit 501(c)3 organization made up of 277 member schools both public and private. The KHSAA sanctions 43 state championships in 13 sports and 4 sport-activities, licenses and trains over 4,000 officials, provides catastrophic insurance for its more than 70,000 member school student-athletes, as well as overseeing coaching education and sports safety programs.