St. Louis-Area Grad Seeks to Inspire Through Website...and the MaxPreps Widget

Brianna Smith graduated from high school just two years ago, but already she is worldly enough to realize that something vital was missing from the St. Louis-area prep scene, particularly for the young student-athletes who help make up the community.

So she started the web site Scope St. Louis:

"This site is based around three main principles: Motivate, Educate and Inspire," says Smith.

"I hope that through this site, more teens will realize how much potential they have and find the motivation to follow all of their passions. Hopefully we will be able to educate each other on the topics that they care about the most so that we can all understand more about the world we live in and about each other.

"Last of all," she adds, "I hope that with this site we can inspire others to follow their passions, find new passions, realize they can do anything they set their mind to, and to help everyone to realize that the teens of St. Louis are the ones who will change the city the most so everyone better take us seriously!"

And what would inspiration be without a 67-school, six-sport MaxPreps widget for Scope St. Louis?

http://www.scopestl.com/dotnetnuke/Sports/tabid/117/Default.aspx

Central California Stakes its Claim

NorCal and SoCal play for fame and glory. CenCal plays for pride and respect.

Or so the web site CenCalBallers.com claims.

Either way, CenCalBallers and webmaster Nathan East have a 68-school widget set up on their main index page.

http://www.cencalballers.com/

Retorts from the other regions are welcome.

Southern California School Making Inroads

Valencia High School, which is located in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area, is starting to close the gap with Baron Collier of Florida for the most poplar widget among school web sites. Valencia's all-sports widget is rapidly approaching the 40,000-views mark:

http://www.hart.k12.ca.us/valencia/

The Vikings' widget is displayed prominently on the home page.

UpMoves.com Moves with MaxPreps Widget

George Jefferson runs a varsity mentoring and marketing service for high schools athletes in North Carolina that covers the area from Winston-Salem and Greensboro in the central portion of the state down to Charlotte. His 117-school, five-sport MaxPreps.com widget appears on his home page, keeping viewers abreast of developments in football, volleyball, boys’ and girls’ basketball and baseball:

http://site.upmoves.com/

Upmoves.com also has an Internet television site where Jefferson posts high school sports-related video. Included in the TV section is a playlist of MaxPreps and Tom Lemming content:

http://www.upmoves.tv/

Barron Collier Tops 40,000 Mark with MaxPreps Widget

It was apparent from the start that the all-sports widget installed on the Barron Collier High home page in Naples, Fla., was going to be a hit.

No one, however, expected it to hit a home run.

After the PIAA District 6 football site jumped to the runaway lead in widget page views parade at the outset – quickly topping 30,000 –
Collier’s widget has not only overtaken the PIAA, it has become the first to surpass the 40,000 mark.

http://www.collier.k12.fl.us/bch/

Scott A. Stahl, a media specialist at Barron Collier and the creator of the school’s widget, said he isn’t sure why the product is so popular.

But he knows one thing.

“It gets a lot of exposure,” he said. “I have the widget on the front page of our school website. That page is the default home page for all computers in the school.”

Moore Means More of the MaxPreps Widget in NC

Few web sites in North Carolina cover a wider variety of pro, college and high school sports than Don Moore’s Greensboro Sports.

You have to love a web site that in the dead of winter and in the thick of the pro and college basketball seasons leads its main section with the Major League Soccer draft (eight Greensboro-area players, after all, were selected, including a good friend of MaxPreps, Herman Award-winner and Denmark-bound Marcus Tracy).

But we digress.

High school sports are a big part of the operation at Greensboro Sports and so, too, is the MaxPreps’ widget:

http://www.greensborosports.com/category/high-school/

Moore is a busy guy in the North Carolina Triad, working a full-time job during the day, running Greensboro Sports in his spare time and also operating a web and Internet-assistance firm aptly-named Don Can Help:

http://www.doncanhelp.com/

MaxPreps Widget Helps Honor the Late Dave Lewis

The website Coach Lewis was constructed to honor the work and memory of former Oakcrest, N.J., boys' basketball coach Dave Lewis, who died last summer of multiple myeloma, the blood cancer that attacks the bones, kidneys and immune system.

Lewis, who was 58, was honored recently prior to Oakcrest's 46-44 overtime win against Middle Township in Mays Landing. Among those who spoke at the ceremony was the coach who took over for Lewis, Frank Brown.

As part of the effort to honor Coach Lewis, his daughter, Rachel Chornomaz, has placed the MaxPreps.com Data Widget on the memorial’s home page:

http://www.coachlewis.org/

Please visit the site to learn more about Dave Lewis both on and off the court. Among other things, his church is involved in the construction of an orphanage in Uganda which will bear his name.

"(Lewis) was a real gentleman and an inspiration to all of us," Middle Township coach Tom Feraco told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We watched him suffer, and he would never complain."

New MaxPreps' Photographer Moves Quickly to Install Widget

Daniel Hyravy, MaxPreps.com’s newest photographer in the Western Kentucky region, has only been with the company for a week but he already has a MaxPreps Data Widget working on behalf of his company web site, PixElite Photography:

http://www.pixeliteonline.com/MaxPreps_Team_Informatio.html

Please check out Daniel’s work both on MaxPreps’ Kentucky page and on his photo site, http://www.pixeliteonline.com/

PixElite Photography is a full service imaging company specializing in Sports Action, Team & Individual Portraits, Custom Posters, Event Photography, and Portraits.

Way to Go, Idaho...MaxPreps Widget in Boise

The Boise Timberline boys’ basketball team is right in the middle of the Southern Idaho 5A championship race, standing at 4-2 in the conference and 5-3 overall. That leaves the Wolves 1 ½ games behind the leader, Eagle High.

Timberline, however, stands in first place with the MaxPreps widget. The school’s athletic department web site is the first in the state to put the widget to use, building a 13-team boys’ basketball module that covers teams in both 4A and 5A.

http://www.wolvesathletics.com/viewTeamPage.html?id=80&content=standings

Many thanks go to Colonel John Goodale of the U.S. Army National Guard in Boise for putting this together.

Northeast Football Premiere (s) the MaxPreps Widget

Northeast Football Premiere (http://www.northeastfbpremiere.com/) is a web site Don Crouch set up a year and a half ago primarily as a resource for coaches that the organization works with through Varsity Gold, the Walter Camp Football Foundation and Evoshield. NFP also runs a couple of 7-on-7 shootouts during the year, and the site serves as a registration portal for those events. Clinics, weightlifting competitions and golf tournaments are on the annual agenda as well.

Don has begun the task of providing more thorough statistical data for visitors by setting up a MaxPreps.com football widget for his Connecticut page, one that includes every team in the state:

http://www.northeastfbpremiere.com/newsct.cfm

He will be adding other New England and Northeast state football widgets in the coming weeks.

Couch is also on the Board of Governors of the Walter Camp Football Foundation (http://www.waltercamp.org/).

MaxPreps Widget, WSLS-TV Join Forces

Congratulations to WSLS-TV, Channel 10 in Roanoke, Va., for creating one of the New Year’s first 50-plus school widgets! WSLS, a Media General-owned NBC affiliate that services the southwestern Virginia region, has deployed a 54-school widget for the winter season, covering both boys’ and girls’ basketball:

http://www.wsls.com/sls/sports/high_school/high_school_statistics

WSLS’s sports director is John Appicello, a two-time Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award winner. Appicello, a Pennsylvania native, has also been honored by the Associated Press for his TV work in five different states.