Faces of Hoover-David Bannister

To say David Bannister supports Hoover High School football would be an understatement.

He became a Hoover High School Booster Club board member when his oldest child was still at Simmons Middle School. Thirteen years later, he’s still on the board, even after his youngest child graduated from Hoover in 2011.

During that time, he has used his expertise in marketing to build digital platforms to connect the community and put together Hoover athletics sponsorship packages for Under Armour, Gatorade, Sports Illustrated, Walmart and Academy Sports and Outdoors — all to keep the “Hoover machine” running, he said.

“I seek out these deals because at the end of the day it keeps the spotlight on Hoover,” he said. “I do it to give back and because I believe it’s important for Hoover to be number one.”

Thanks to his efforts, more than 40 restaurants around Hoover broadcast the high school games on Friday nights.

In 2006 he started social media pages for different sports groups at the school, and four years ago he launched the school’s ihigh.com site, which hosts updated football news and information. Today the site gets about 9 million site views and 850,000 unique visitors a year, Bannister said.

When MTV’s Two-A-Days was documenting Hoover football, he worked to start an e-commerce site that did up to $50,000 in sales a month.

At the heart of all Bannister’s promotional work is the community he is supporting.

“Hoover’s got a lot of doers,” he said. “You don’t win 97 state championships in 10 years by not being great at everything you do. That’s not just good coaching.”