Kid who was bullied for his homemade Vols shirt gets free merch from school, shirt in his honor

By Ryan Wilusz, Knoxville News Sentinel | September 11, 2019 10:52 am ET

A Florida elementary school student went from brimming with excitement to crying at his desk last week.

After the kid drew a University of Tennessee logo and attached it to his orange shirt for his school’s “College Colors Day,” some schoolmates made fun of him.

Well, there’s a happy ending to this story.

The news of the incident made it all the way to the Tennessee campus in Knoxville, the football team and the VolShop, which partnered to send the boy a special package, said Jimmy Delaney, the associate athletics director for marketing and fan experience.

“As a marketing and fan experience guy, I absolutely love the creativity that he showed there,” Delaney said. “I think he will go from making his own T-shirts to now being the envy of the school. And the fact that it’s in SEC country is a good thing.”

The story went viral after a Facebook post from his teacher, Laura Snyder.

“When I told my students about this day a week before, this particular child came to me and told me that he wanted to wear a University of Tennessee shirt, but he didn’t have one,” Snyder wrote in her post. “We discussed that he could wear an orange shirt to show his spirit.”

But the boy took it to the next level by attaching the hand-drawn logo.

“Some girls at the lunch table next to his (who didn’t even participate in college colors day) had made fun of his sign that he had attached to his shirt,” Snyder wrote. “He was DEVASTATED.”

Snyder applauded the boy for using the resources he had available and made plans to get him a Tennessee shirt. But first, she asked if anyone had connections to the university to “make it a little extra special for him.”

Read the Knoxville News for more.

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