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3 Schools Click In Seat Belt Contest

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By LIZ BLEAU, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 23, 2008

BRANDON - Three area high schools have taken top honors and a share of $10,000 in cash prizes in the Battle of the Belts contest, which promotes safety by encouraging high school students to use seat belts.

The contest was sponsored by the county's Community Traffic Safety Team with help from the Katie Marchetti Memorial Foundation. The foundation was created in memory of a Durant High School student who died of injuries she suffered in a car crash in 2006. She was not wearing a seat belt.

St. Joseph's Children's Advocacy Center was the largest contributor to the prize fund, giving $5,000.

Newsome High School won the top prize of $4,000 for having the highest number of students using seat belts. Brandon High School won a $3,000 prize for having the best rate of improvement for seat belt use. Bloomingdale High School won a $2,000 prize for having the best seat belt promotional campaign. Gaither High School in Tampa took a fourth-place prize of $1,000 for having the second-best public service announcement.

The contest took place in fall, when volunteer counters - many of them nurses from Tampa General Hospital - visited the 18 participating schools and anonymously took counts of how many drivers and passengers wore seat belts entering and leaving school grounds. The counts were taken prior to each school's weeklong seat belt safety awareness campaigns, and then immediately after.

The Newsome Student Government Association ran the seat belt campaign there. Casey Feeney, 18, historian for the association, said she helped create T-shirts promoting seat belt use and kept a scrapbook documenting activities during the campaign.

"This prize isn't just for the student government, though," she said. "Our whole student body participated in this event."

Newsome had the highest percentage of seat belt use at the end of its campaign, 97 percent.

Student government member Allison Martin, 17, a senior, said she worked with Feeney on making banners, getting supplies and creating the scrapbook.

"I thought we might do well in the contest, but getting first prize is great," she said. "Everyone in student government and the school helped to win this."

She said the prize money will be given to Newsome's administration to use for student projects.

At Brandon High, volunteers recorded 53 percent seat belt use before the promotional campaign and 75 percent after for a 22 percent increase, the highest of all 18 schools.

Dianne Sipe, who works with the Marchetti Foundation and is Katie Marchetti's grandmother, said students at Brandon High told her they wanted to use the money to build an outdoor eating area. One table would be dedicated to students who have died in accidents in which they didn't use seat belts.

At Bloomingdale, student government leaders created distinctive yellow-and-black T-shirts they wore every day of the campaign. For next year's campaign, the group hopes to provide T-shirts for the whole school. Student leaders are working on plans for how to use the $3,000 prize, Sipe said.

Reporter Liz Bleau can be reached at (813) 865-1557 or lbleau@tampatrib.com

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