Sean Callen remembers his time as a student in the Oswego City School District as a great experience during the 1980s and 1990s.

Callen thinks about the wrestling match his father brought him to when he was only 7 or 8 years old against Oswego and Fulton. The gym at Leighton Elementary School was packed, and people were standing in the doorway just trying to get in. Callen compared moments like that to the popular “Friday Night Lights” football games in Texas.

“It wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, my son’s wrestling.’ It was way beyond that. It was all about the Oswego community and the Fulton community,” Callen said. “Everybody knew the wrestlers. There was this buzz, and everybody knew the wrestlers’ last names from Fulton. Everybody from Fulton knew the wrestlers from Oswego. It was a community thing.”

Now, after joining the board about three years ago, Callen is the Buc Boosters board president. He joined the boosters at a time where the school district was making major budget cuts – some of which would affect the sports programs. Between the boosters and a group called Save Our Sports Committee, the school district received enough funding so sports programs were not cut.

The boosters now support multiple events throughout the school year. They provide funding for the school’s annual spirit week and homecoming in the fall, manage a concession stand during the winter sporting events and even support a track meet between fifth and sixth graders in the elementary schools of Oswego.

The Buc Boosters, however, get major funding from two events throughout the school year: The Go Bucs 5k that happens in the fall and the annual Oswego Buc Boosters Golf Tournament hosted at the Oswego Country Club.

Callen said this year was a record year for the boosters in terms of the money the board raised and the number of teams that participated.

“We had 32 golf teams,” Callen said. “We had a lot of great sponsorship throughout our community, and we raised right around $22,000.”

Callen has three children currently enrolled in the school district. He has an 11-year-old in elementary school, a 13-year-old in middle school and a 15-year-old in high school.

“My kids are thriving where they are right now,” Callen said. “If they get involved with athletics, it’s a really great experience.”

Despite having three children of his own in the district, he said his reason for joining the Buc Boosters is beyond that.

Callen said he, along with his wife, grew up in Oswego and attended the city school district. Both of their parents still live in the city. He talked about how he and his wife were on the fence whether they were going to stay in Oswego or move to a nearby area, such as Marcellus, New York, or Skaneateles, New York. After evaluating Oswego’s school district, they realized they had found home.

“We made a decision we were going to stay here, and that’s when I got involved with the boosters because I had such a great experience and my wife had such a great experience at the Oswego middle school and high school,” Callen said. “It was a much greater picture than just my 11-, 13- and 15-year-old. This was about the Oswego community.”

The Buc Boosters are now putting their focus on a capital vote that is happening in December of this year. The capital budget is going to bring a new environment to the classrooms and improve safety. That part of the budget is being pushed by the board of education, whose president is Callen’s wife, Aimee.

The part that affects the Buc Boosters is the section that improves the athletic complexes of the school district, including the baseball and soccer fields, as well as football stadium. The improvements would help the school district compare its own complexes to those of nearby schools, such as Fulton, Mexico and Phoenix, Callen said.

“If you look around, we’re absolutely one of the last in our area school districts to upgrade our facilities,” Callen said. “That’ll not only help with student-athletes, it’ll help our marching band. That’s part of the school spirit. The boosters want to bring the musicians, the athletes, and have everybody at a football game, for example.”

Callen said the Buc Boosters is also trying to help the city compete with other local areas in order to be more appealing to families, especially ones with young kids. He said it all starts with what the school district can offer, both athletically and scholastically.

Callen and his wife lived in Cortland for a short time before moving back to Oswego, and after choosing the elementary school for their own children, he realized that all families determine where they want to live based on two major things: where they work and what school they want their children to attend.

“We want families to come and see our community with the lake, with SUNY Oswego, with a great hospital, with a mayor who’s doing great things with downtown revitalization and a great school district,” Callen said.

With the Buc Boosters, the biggest step the group is taking is all about rebranding and marketing, which all started around six months ago, Callen said. The boosters created their own logo, separate from the one the athletics teams use, and are in the process of making their own website. The website will have pictures from games, forms for athletics teams and an alumni section for people to connect with the boosters.

The board will be looking for sponsorships not only from community members and local organizations, but national companies like Coca-Cola and Powerade as well to provide more for the school to help for a big push with booster club membership.

Callen also said the boosters are now going to be using social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, come to age with today’s students, promote events going on and even cover some games live.

“You can only do so much within the Oswego community… That’s how we’ve got to do it: with technology, our website and social media to really get our name out there and support the athletics programs,” Callen said. “We’re going to do that with social media and create that excitement and that buzz.”

While still in the process of moving toward that next step, the Buc Boosters have made some small steps toward getting more of the community involved. Last year, the board established the Coach of the Year award, given to a coach in the city school district, and they have also given scholarships to senior student-athletes at an awards banquet. Callen said the board gave out around $3,000 last year.

For Callen, his hopes for the Buc Boosters is a shared vision for the entire 13-person board that he oversees. Past the rebranding, he wants to get a platform to highlight the hard work and competitiveness of the student-athletes at all levels of competition and get more of the student body involved in school pride. He said he would love to be able to bring two large groups, the musicians and athletes, all together.

“I think we’ll achieve what we want to achieve,” Callen said.

But for Callen personally, it is all about giving student-athletes the same experience he had while in high school from 1987-1991 and bring the community back to really care about the high school athletics.

“It’ll take a while, but I think we’ll get there,” Callen said. “It will be pretty cool when the community has a much higher-level interest of what’s going on at the field, on the courts, on the rinks, with our school district – that’ll be pretty neat.”