Hit a Home Run With a Dedicated Sports Team Photo Album

By Cathi Nelson

From the first homerun to the final win of the season, milestone sports achievements should be remembered for years to come. Whether football, basketball, baseball or soccer, a dedicated sports team-focused photo album will help immortalize the memories that are sure to become regular dinnertime conversation fodder.

With big teams and lots of parents taking photos, making sports team albums can get overwhelming very quickly. Here are some tips to keep a great sports memory keepsake simple.

First, start with these basic parameters so you know you have enough materials, without wasting time sifting through mounds of photos. Your book should have:

• 4 photos per player
• 6-8 photos of each coach
• 15-30 photos for collage pages
• Photos for the cover

To make sure you have an even number of photos of everyone on the team, you need to get the word out! Use your team phone tree and contact all of the players’ parents, or ask the coach to make an announcement at the next few practices. Each child—or their parents—should submit a handful of their favorite photos. Have them email the files to you, so you can easily download and store them in one place on your computer.

Once you have all the photos you will be working with, make sure they are organized and labeled for easy access. The final album will have a page for each player and coach, so a simple system is to have one folder with each person’s name. Only photos of that person go in their folder.

A separate folder called “Group Shots” can hold all of the pictures for your collage pages. These should feature several team members, or pictures of the whole team.

Once you’re ready, follow Appo’s blueprint for creating the perfect sports team album:

Keep it Simple
Develop a basic template that can be used for different teams and seasons. This way, you get the bulk of the design work done for your first album, and can simply reuse it for faster projects in the future.

Make it Flexible
Use a black background as the base of your book so you can use the same style again and again. To personalize each album, simply matt the photos in the current team’s colors, and use matching colored text for captions and headlines. For added detail, find an image of the team’s mascot to layer in over the photos.

Get Into Detail
Include names, quotes and special memories on each player’s and coach’s page that they will want to remember later. A note from the coach to the players as a team on the collage page adds a special touch that turns a photo album into a cherished keepsake.

Cathi Nelson is Founder and President of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (Appo)