Small Town Sports Page

[wamboid]

Our local newspaper doesn't cover anythin below Varsity level sports. Several parents asked me if I would put something together reporting on stuff our paper doesn't cover, mostly about kids sports, but could include anything. I threw this together really quick so it's still in a rough draft, but anyone got any ideas or suggestions? So far it's gone over really well. I just hope I haven't created a monster that will haunt me.

Oops, forgot the link www.MarshallSportsPage.com (http://www.marshallsportspage.com)

[tylivia]

What you are doing is fantastic for that community!

As far as navigation...easy enough for me.

The only thing I would suggest is a simple form for someone to submit an article with a "Submit Article" link. All you would need is a name; email; sport reference; date of event; text area; and a submit button.

I also believe you meant to say, "By Line" instead of "bylin" when you state that you will give credit for the article?

Otherewise, nice site!

[wamboid]

Thanks. Good catch. My spell checker must not have caught it because of the quotes. Actually, it probably caught it and I wrongly ignored it because of the quotes. You are probably right about the form. Once school starts up again I hope to have some students helping me keep up. Maybe I can arrange something with the journalism teacher and they can get graded on it.

The site has been well received so far by the community. In fact, we have a small private college here, and the coaches who found out about it want me to start covering them next year. They have students on scholarship from Brazil, Samoa, and Denmark as well as about 30 states. With our lousy local coverage, their parents never get to read about them. What better place than the Internet.

[KDLA]

You might place a "clear" designation in the article headers. I noticed that the heading for the second article is up next the photo for the first, with the article hanging down a few em below it.

You also might style those photo captions to have a margin-top of "0" and a font-size of .7em or so, so they don't get muddled into the actual content.

NICE site!

KDLA

[thewebman]

it doesn't look that great in Firefox, fix these errors (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marshallsportspage.com%2F), and it's a bit much too red for me. try to include a light grey or really light blue. last but not least, I'm not quite sure I like the link rollovers. I like the purpose of the site, a lot of sites don't really have much of a purpose for being on the net. It's a good idea, stick with it.

[wamboid]

Take another look at it. I think it was a "clear" example of haste makes waste. I literally threw the article with the picture together on my lunch break and didn't have time to test it at different resolutions and in firefox. I had forgotten to close the article div, which didn't affect anything in ie.

As far as the color goes, I don't really care for it much myself, but it is a local school thing, and they love it. Gotta give the customers what they like. Also, the errors are basically due to the google adsense stuff. They seem to be appearing correct in every browser I've checked, and the click throughs are working, so I'm not going to mess with it. That is the only pay I get for the site right now.

Reaction in town has been amazing. A local printer made free copies of a "special print edition" I made for that first baseball night story. I handed them out at the second night of the league to 48 kids on the teams playing that night. I expected maybe 20 or 30 hits from it. That night there were 128 between 8:30 and midnight and another 90 before noon the next day. That was my only advertising. Now if I can just keep up with the articles!

[tylivia]

The site does look better. I had actually created a site for our local HS basbeall team. I had everything from photos, stats, fundraisers, rosters with photos, pages for college scouts, former players, a page for former players playing in college or in the minors...and the school had me shut it down!!!!

The actual school district site has a blank page for their baseball program...unbelievable...and this is a team that had gone to state regionals last year, state semi-finals 2 and 3 years ago..and has a rich tradition of winning teams and having former players have successful college careers and some playing in the minor leagues. In fact, I am a former player who earned a scholorship to Bloomsburg University for baseball.

I thought I would "give back" by creating a wonderful site that had a lot of interest and during the season averaged over 500 hits per day.

And I did all of this for FREE!

I know how hard it is to keep the site fresh, keep the articles coming, etc...and the only advertisising I got was thru the programs...which was fine with me...I just enjoyed doing the deed!

I can't imagine having to keep up with all of the sports that you are with this site. Granted, all of the content is not there yet, but I am keeping it in my bookmarks, just to use as an example and for me to watch your progess.

I just want to say, good luck, great job, and it's nice to see that altruism lives in the virtual world.

[wamboid]

Hard to believe how unappreciative some can be. I haven't had any trouble with the school, mostly because of how bad our local paper is. I've only had two problems so far. The person in charge of the youngest baseball league didn't want the kids privacy violated. He talked to a few parents who talked to a few more and I hear he got over 100 phone calls wanting him to support me. The youth soccer league only has one more week. I asked their president if I could get some stats from her for the season and do something good for the last game and a season wrap up. She said their board would have to vote.

I can't imagine why your school would want your site closed down. Sounds like it was only helping them. It was probably just petty jealousy that your site was making theirs look even worse. I'm expecting trouble like that soon from our local paper. If your site had a large following that would like to have it back, you might remind the school of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, although they would probably just get more mad.

Thanks again, and good luck!

[tylivia]

Here is the thing. The head coach and rest of the coaching staff...and parents...loved the site! The head coach is also a teacher. They actually had threatened him if the site was not shut down.

I had used a disclaimer, stating that the site was non-proft, owned and operated by a former player and alumnus, gave credit for the use of the team logo, colors, etc...even had a link to the official high school page.

In fact, the high school page is a very poor template purchased thru www.shoolwires.com.

The high school site is: www.shikbraves.org. First...try and find the baseball link, second, look at all of the content. This is a team that right now, is 16-1, in first place, and has two Division 1 prospects!!! In fact, the latest D-1 prospect they had is now a Junior at Georgia, Bobby Felmy, who has been a 3 year starter and has been named all SEC 2005 and an All-American Outfielder.

Yet, not am mention or a quip about the team and its former players.

You know what, I am going to petition the parents, get some signatures, and bring it to the board. You are right, I have a 1st Amendment Rght to do this site!

As far as your site, I wouldn;t worry about the local paper. What can they do? Nothing! You have every right to start your own news page. Just be careful using their articles.

Take care,

Har

[wamboid]

I see what you mean, I couldn't find one mention of it. Even the calender didn't say anything except whether school was in session or not. Good idea to petition the parents.

Today or tomorrow I have to go talk to the sports editor at our paper. My own son's league starts tomorrow and I'm the official scorer. The paper has always covered this league, just not very well. He was going to totally drop it last year, saying he didn't want to go to the games and the scorers were too inconsistant. He only agreed to cover it last year when I took over as scorer and basically spoon fed him articles. This year I'm tempted to just put it on my site and tell him he can use it if he wants. Last year I took him copies of the scorebook and some notes. I think at a minimum I will post that stuff and tell him to get it from the site.