Sports Day Certificates

Six designs, each with a handwritable blank. Everything prints on plain A4 in black and white. There is also a browser tool on the website that types the names on for you.

The wording, and why it is written this way

The participation certificate is the one that goes wrong

It is the most-printed certificate in any setting and the easiest to get wrong, because it is very hard to write without accidentally saying "you did not win".

Never

Frame the award as second best, as a thank-you for turning up, or as a comfort. That rules out, deliberately and in every design:

"better luck next time"
"for trying" and "you tried your best"
"consolation"
"taking part is what counts"
"participant" used on its own as a label
any rank, time or "out of" on a participation certificate

Do

Name a real thing the person did, in words that read the same whether they came first or last. "For getting out there and giving every event a go" is a description of something that happened. "For trying your best" is a consolation. The difference is not subtle to the person holding it.

Keep the comparison off it. A participation certificate with a time on it is a results slip.

Simple and warm, never babyish. A nine-year-old can tell the difference, and so can a nineteen-year-old.

Default wording by phase

All of it is overridable — in the tool, or by writing over the blank version.

Early years

Design	Title	Detail line
Participation	Well done for joining in	You ran, jumped and cheered at Sports Day.
Personal best	Look how far you have come	You did something today you could not do before.
Team spirit	A kind and helpful friend	For cheering everyone on.
House award	Our team did it together	(house name)

Primary

Design	Title	Detail line
Participation	Well done for taking part	For getting out there and giving every event a go.
Placed	First place	(event name)
Personal best	A personal best	You beat your own best in (event). That is the one that counts.
Team spirit	Team spirit award	For encouraging everyone in (house) house.
House award	House award	(house name)

Secondary

Design	Title	Detail line
Participation	Sports Day — taking part	For competing in (event) and backing your house.
Placed	First place	(event name)
Personal best	Personal best	A new personal best in (event).
Team spirit	Sportsmanship award	For fair competition and support for others.
House award	House award	(house name)

College and university

Design	Title	Detail line
Participation	Sports Day — competitor	For competing in (event).
Placed	First place	(event name)
Personal best	Personal best	New personal best — (event).
Team spirit	Sportsmanship award	For fair play and support for team mates.
Team award	Team award	(team or course name)

{{SITE_NAME}}Sports Day Certificates · WordingNotes page 1 of 2

Swap-in by phase

Early years: Every child gets one, nobody gets a placed certificate, and a sticker alongside it is worth more to a three-year-old than the certificate is. First names only, written large — use the large early years blank.
Primary: Participation for everyone plus placed certificates for the top three is the usual arrangement. Print the participation ones in advance with the names on; write the placed ones by hand on the day, because you cannot know them beforehand.
Secondary: Placed and personal best do most of the work. A participation certificate for every participant in a year group is a lot of printing for something that may go in a bin; consider participation certificates only for those who entered the minimum and turned up, or drop them and use the team spirit award more.
College and university: Keep it to placed, personal best and team awards. An adult does not want a participation certificate, and offering one can read as patronising. If you want everyone to have something, make it the team award and give it to the whole team.

Printing

A4 landscape, one per page is the design, and the one that looks like a certificate.
Two per page, A4 portrait, is also provided. It is the toner-saving option, and settings do ask for it.
Black and white is the default. These designs have no fills at all, so they survive a photocopier and a nearly empty toner cartridge.
Nothing sits within 12 mm of the paper edge, because school printers clip.
Plain A4 is all you need. Thicker paper is nicer if you have it, but nothing depends on it.
Three border styles: plain rule, double rule, and a drawn rosette motif — all drawn with lines, not pictures, so they print cleanly at any size.

Names that must print correctly

Accented and non-ASCII characters are a specific check on this resource, because a certificate with a mangled name on it is worse than no certificate. These must all print exactly as shown:

Ní Bhraonáin · O'Brien-Smith · Zoë · François · Łukasz · Siân · José

If a name comes out as a question mark, a box, or Ã©, the certificate must not be given out. These designs use the system font stack precisely so that this works on a school computer with no font installed.

A long name must shrink to fit on one line inside the border rather than wrapping or overflowing. The longest name these designs allow for is 45 characters.

How many to print

Design	How many
Participation	One per participant
Placed (1st, 2nd, 3rd)	Three per event, plus 20% spares — ties happen
Personal best	As many as you decide to give; 10% of participants is a usual sort of number
Team spirit	One or two per group or class
House or team award	One per house, plus one for the winning house to keep
Handwritable blanks	At least 20. This is the number people under-order every single time

Keep the blanks at the scorer's table, not in the office. The moment you need one is the moment somebody has been missed, and that is on the field.

Checklist

Before the day

Design or designs chosen
Phase wording chosen, and read aloud once to check it does not sound like a consolation prize
Setting name and event name spelled correctly — check it, because it is on every single copy
Date decided, or left blank to write by hand
Signature line label decided (Head of Setting, PE Lead, Course Tutor, Head of Department)
Names checked for spelling and accents against your own records, not from memory
One test certificate printed and looked at before you print 240
Accented names checked on the test print
Participation certificates printed with names on
Placed certificates printed blank, to write on the day
At least 20 handwritable blanks printed
Someone named to sign them, and told how many there are

On the day

Blanks and a pen at the scorer's table
Certificates sorted by group before the presentation, not during it
Somebody checks that nobody has been missed — a child without a certificate when everyone else has one is the thing people remember about a sports day
Spares kept back for whoever was absent

Names stay on your computer

The browser tool on the website runs entirely inside your browser. No name you type is sent to us or to anyone else, and nothing is saved on the website. Close the page and it is gone. If you upload your setting's logo, that stays on your device too — it is read by your own browser and never uploaded.

{{SITE_NAME}} · {{SITE_URL}}Free to print and use within your own settingNotes page 2 of 2