T-Shirts for Sports Clubs: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
A club can split its 50 t-shirts across sizes however it likes - the minimum is 50 per design, not 50 of one size. The split that works is built from actual named players wherever possible, with a small unallocated buffer in the middle sizes for new members. Guessing a symmetrical curve across a squad is what produces boxes of unworn shirts at the end of a season.
How should a squad split 50 shirts?
Start from the roster, not from a template. Write down every player, coach and committee member who is getting a shirt, put a size against each name, and count what you have. That covers most of your 50. Then decide what the remainder is for: new members joining mid-season, replacements for shirts that get damaged, and a couple of spares for anyone whose size was wrong. Those spares should sit in the sizes your squad actually clusters around, which for most adult teams is medium and large.
How do you collect sizes without chasing people for weeks?
Set a closing date and mean it. The clubs that get this right do three things: they publish the deadline with the consequence attached, they take sizes in person at training rather than only online, and they have a rule for non-responders that is decided in advance.
- Put a size chart with chest measurements next to the form - players guess badly from letters alone.
- Take sizes at two consecutive training sessions, which catches almost everyone who plays regularly.
- Decide in advance what a non-responder gets, and tell them that is what they get.
- Ask whether the fit is regular or boxy before collecting, because a boxy cut runs wider and changes the answers.
That last point catches clubs out. Boxy fits sit noticeably wider across the chest and shorter in the body, so a player who is a large in a regular cut may want a medium in a boxy one. If you are ordering a fit the squad has not worn before, a sample is the cheap way to settle it - the club sample post explains what £150 covers.
What about the sizes nobody claims?
Keep the tails short. The temptation is to order a full ladder from XS to 3XL so nobody is excluded, but on a 50-piece run an unclaimed XS is a shirt you paid for and will never issue. Order the extreme sizes only against named people who have asked for them. If someone joins later needing a size you did not order, that is a reorder question rather than a reason to carry stock all season - reordering club t-shirts covers how those runs work.
Do junior and senior squads need separate orders?
Only if the design differs. If the artwork is identical, junior and senior sizes go on one run and count towards one quantity, which also helps the price tier - club t-shirt cost shows how the bands work. If the junior shirts carry a different sponsor or a different crest colourway, that is a second design and its own 50. Youth sizing is worth measuring rather than assuming, because age-based labels vary widely between garment types and a 13-14 in one range is not the same chest width as another.
What should you do with the split after the order?
Record it. Keep the list of names against sizes and, separately, a note of what you wished you had ordered - the sizes you ran out of first and the ones still in the box in March. That second list is the one that makes next season's order right. Our wholesale t-shirts page and the sports clubs page are where to start when the committee is ready to place it.
