30 items
designed and produced each year across apparel, drinkware, and accessories
100 Belles
outfitted annually, with about 35 new girls joining the team each season
800 camp tees
produced each May for the Belles’ summer camp program
The Challenge
Every spring, the Highland Park Belles face the same handoff problem. The famed Highland Park High School dance team is run by the head coach and a group of volunteer mothers, and those volunteers rotate every year. New moms inherit a program with roughly 30 apparel and merchandise items, about 100 Belles to outfit, and around 35 new girls joining the team each season. Nobody hands them a playbook.
Without a consistent partner, that turnover means starting from scratch annually: hunting down last year’s designs, re-sourcing every garment, and hoping this season’s sweatsuits match the ones the seniors wore. For a program with this much tradition, close enough is not close enough. The Belles needed one thing volunteer turnover could not take away: continuity.
That’s where BLP came in.
Our Approach
Bob Lilly Promotions (BLP) serves as the Belles’ annual design and merchandise partner, now in year two of the program. Each season, BLP works with the head coach and that year’s volunteer moms to plan, design, and produce the full lineup of custom team apparel across three categories: apparel, drinkware, and accessories.
The lineup runs about 30 items a year. It is school spirit wear built for the whole Belles family, not just the girls on the field:
- Camp tees, practice pieces, sweatsuits, hoodies, and sleep shirts for the team
- Personalized senior mom jerseys and custom personalized varsity bomber jackets
- Polos for dads and tops for moms, so the whole family shows up in Belles blue and gold
- Finished, production-ready art created from the moms’ Canva-style submissions, with BLP assisting in design and selection each year
- Decoration on client-supplied garments for select pieces, plus approximately 800 camp t-shirts produced each May
Each year brings new designs plus reissued favorites from prior seasons, so traditions carry forward while the lineup stays fresh.
Solution & Outcome
The Belles now have a personalized team gear program that survives the annual volunteer handoff. The coach and each new group of moms start the season with an established partner that already knows the designs, the sizing history, the calendar, and the standards, so the program picks up where last year left off instead of starting over.
The result is a significant annual program the Belles renew year after year, now in year two, with new designs in the lineup alongside the returning favorites the girls asked for by name. For schools and team programs across Texas, this is the model: one partner carrying the design files, the production quality, and the institutional memory, so volunteers can focus on the team instead of the logistics.
Learn more about the Highland Park Belles at highlandbelles.org.
