SCHOOL IS BACK IN SESSION! 6 WAYS YOU CAN USE A CANOPY TENT ON CAMPUS!
Summer is wrapping up and fall is right around the corner. It’s back-to-school season at colleges and universities nationwide. If you’re like most college students, you’ve likely started to prepare with back-to-school shopping and organizing, trading out your swimsuits for syllabi, and your tank tops for textbooks. However, just because your vacation is over doesn’t mean you have to shelve everything you’ve been using over the summer. In fact, there are a few items that you can keep in rotation well into the school year. One of these is your canopy tent. A great source of shade and shelter, your canopy tent can help you have hours of outdoor fun — even after classes have started. In this guide, our experts here at Extreme Canopy discuss several ways to use your canopy tent through the fall semester and beyond. Get the most out of your tent, and shop tent essentials with us!
THE CANOPY TENT: A COLLEGE ESSENTIAL
A canopy tent may not be the first thing on your list of college essentials. However, if you’re planning on hosting outdoor events while at college, a canopy tent is a must-have. Also called “pop-up tents” and “instant canopies,” canopy tents are portable, versatile and easy-to-use shelter solutions that are great for all-season use. Standing anywhere from 8 to 10 feet in height and measuring anywhere from 10-by-10 feet to 20-by-20 feet in area, these tents can be used to house small events, shelter booths or hold merchandise.
The best tents on the market today are made with aluminum frames with height-adjustable legs that are both lightweight and expandable. No assembly is required when setting up canopy tents, and the set-up process can be finished in mere minutes. Tear-down is just as easy, and storage is made simple thanks to collapsible frames that can fit in most cars and closets. A standard canopy tent comes with a fabric roof but no sides. These can be purchased along with other tent accessories. Finally, some tent manufacturers offer custom canopies that can be customized with colors, texts, logos and even photos on their fabric roofs and sizes. If you’re looking for a truly unique tent that will turn heads, the custom route is the way to go.
So, what are some of the many ways you can use your canopy tent on campus? Read on to find out, and enjoy the great outdoors in shade, shelter and style this semester.
TAILGATING FOR SPORTING EVENTS
One of the best things about college is the proximity and all-encompassing nature of college sports. The best time to be a fan of a team is when you are actually in school and passing by the athletes you are supporting in the halls, libraries and at college parties. Tailgating college athletics has pretty much become an endurance sport of its own over the past several decades. Many college fans choose to skip the Friday night frat parties so that they can wake up at 4 AM for the Saturday morning tailgate. Tailgating involves a whole day out in the elements: rain or shine (or snow, or sleet). Your team is going to play in any weather, so you have to come prepared to tailgate in any weather. Be the hero of the parking lot by providing shelter for your tailgate: invest in an instant canopy to pop up over your section of the lot. It’ll help you and the other fans in your group make it through the marathon that is the pregame tailgate so that everyone can make it inside the stadium for the first-quarter kickoff.
Have school or university pride to spare? Consider getting a canopy tent with your school’s colors or logo on it. Nothing makes your tailgate stand out among the sea of generic fan tailgates like a vibrant, colorful canopy tent.
INTRAMURAL SPORTS
The freshman 15 is real, folks. So are the sophomore, junior and senior 15’s. Food on college campuses is very carb-heavy and will wear down your stellar summer body fast. (Not to mention the calories associated with college drinking, which some students take as an extra class.) If you’re not a gym-head to begin with, it can be very hard to stay active in college now that you are no longer a high school athlete. To stave off weight gain and stay active, join intramural teams! Intramural sports are excellent ways to work out and give your mind and body a break from those countless hours crunched up in front of a computer screen at the library. Get an instant canopy for your intramural team for a competitive advantage over other teams in the league. Are you an intramural organizer? Get a canopy tent or two for your refs, scorekeepers and administrators to congregate under before and after intramural games.
WEEKEND TRIPS
It’s great to get off campus every once in a while. Far too many students stay on campus for nearly every single weekend over the course of their four years in college. Getting off campus is great for your mental health in that it gets you away from all of the stressors in your life and helps you get a new perspective. Traveling shows you a world outside of your college bubble, which is always a good thing for young learners. (Traveling is also a better alternative for your physical health compared to what you might usually be doing on weekends in college.) Go on a camping trip, go on a mini road trip, do something to get out of the all-too-real “college bubble.” When you’re spending time away from campus, there are so many different places and times that it’d be ideal to have a 10’ x 10’ square of instant shade or weather protection. Get a canopy tent. This portable and versatile source of shelter will be one of the most helpful and important things that you pack for your weekend getaway.
STUDENT ORGANIZATION PROMOTIONS
Sometimes college is about collaboration, but often it’s about competition. If you’re involved in a club or organization, it can be hard to generate interest when you’re competing with dozens (sometimes even hundreds) of other clubs all vying for the attention of the same wide-eyed freshmen. Club fairs are chaotic events where it’s very hard to get a leg up on the many booths around you. Think beyond the booth and stand out from the competition by covering your space with a canopy tent. Not only will a canopy tent draw the eyes of undergrads looking to find their niche on campus, but it will also keep the members of your club happy and sunburn-free during their multi-hour volunteering shifts at any student organization fair. Get a canopy tent for the club you’re running and you’ll find it much easier to fill volunteering time slots. If you’ve got it in the club budget, consider getting a custom printed back wall to attract even more attention.
STUDENT ORGANIZATION ACTIVITIES
So, you got an instant canopy to promote your student organization and gain new members. That’s great. Now that you have those members, it’s time to show them how awesome your club can be. Here, again, your canopy tent can help. Use your tent at every event your club attends — indoors or out. Having shelter and a station will help members of your club congregate and have a great time. Lightweight and compact when folded down, most canopies can be carried by one person and set up in mere minutes with a small group. The goal of your student organization is to have fun, make memories, all while doing helpful activities around campus and the community. With shade, shelter and an official base of operations, you’ll be well on your way.
FUN WITH FRIENDS
We all know that a lot of college is about the time spent outside of the classroom with your friends having fun in as many ways as possible. A lot of college fun with friends takes place at barely-off-campus upperclassman houses. There, backyard BBQs and weekend kickbacks abound. During these get-togethers, shade and shelter are essentials. You are in the lucky minority if you get a place that has a large porch that can hold all of your friends. Many college houses do have access to the outdoors but don’t necessarily have a covered area for congregating. Since a lot of collegiate hangouts happen in the middle of the day when the dehydrating sun is at its hottest — and since alcohol dehydrates the body even further — shade is an absolute essential during these events. Get everything (and everyone) covered with a canopy tent so you can continue to have fun in the sun.
GET THE INDUSTRY’S BEST CANOPY TENTS HERE AT EXTREME CANOPY
No matter what you’re up to in the coming year at college, you’re going to want to get a canopy tent that can keep up with you and your jam-packed lifestyle. Cheap plastic canopies may have appealing price tags, but they may also break on you before the first semester is complete. Get a canopy that will last not just through your undergrad degree but all the way through your graduate school education. Committed to quality, our team here at Extreme Canopy provides college students with the best, most reliable tents in the business. We use durable, performance-tuned materials like aluminum for our legs and bars, steel pins to hold everything together, and thick, PVC-coated polyester canvases so that the canopy you buy from us will continue to pop up and down for all of your extracurricular events through college and beyond.
We also offer a ton of different completely customizable canopy accessories so that you can stake down your tent on concrete, back yards, turf fields, parking lots and other types of terrain. Some other accessories we offer include slide-in walls for extra shelter and visibility, as well as attachable wheels for extra mobility. Also, check out how affordable and easy it is to get custom printed canopy tents to support your school or your individual student organization. We know you’re budgeting, so we sell our tents directly to you to cut out the middlemen and keep prices competitive. For quality, affordability and custom options, there is simply no better place to buy a canopy tent.