Sun Shining on Widget in Naples

Naples, Fla., is a hotbed of standout schools and outstanding athletes and tradition on the southwest coast of the Sunshine State. We were thus pleased to hear that we’d been welcomed to Cougar Country by the Barron Collier high school site.

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

Widget Delivers for Concord, Kannapolis

The Independent Tribune of Concord & Kannapolis, N.C., has seven schools in its circulation area in Cabarrus County and checks in using the following all-sports MaxPreps.com widget on the following page:

http://www2.independenttribune.com/p/content/cit-max-preps/

One of the paper’s seven teams, A.L. Brown, reached the 3-AA football championship game last weekend, falling to Dudley, 34-18, in Winston-Salem.

Fayetteville Observer Knows Football - and Widgets

Last week was a fabulous week for high school football in North Carolina as the NCHSAA conducted its 95th-annual championships in eight divisions at three venues in the Triad. The final game on Sunday was arguably the best and the wildest as Richmond Senior outlasted Jack Britt, 38-35, for the Class 4-AA title.

The Fayetteville Observer and its popular high school web section, 910Preps.com, had a special interest in the latter game; the paper proudly claims both Richmond and Jack Britt as members of its Cape Fear circulation area, and displays the stats of these two titans – as well as 4-A champion Seventy-First High – on its 25-team widget. Seventy-First, incidentally, beat another Observer circulation team, Douglas Byrd, in the final. East Bladen reached the NCHSAA finals as well.

http://www.910preps.com/

Evangel Christian Joins the Widget Ranks

It isn’t often that an 11-time state football champion, one that stands as one of the all-time greats in the history of America high school football, joins your media team. But that’s exactly what happened on the day when Shreveport (La.) Evangel Christian Academy signed up to use the MaxPreps.com widget:

http://www.evangelacademy.com/Athletics/highschool/football/index.php

Though Evangel lost last week in the Louisiana state championship game in New Orleans to another storied opponent – John Curtis – it still went 12-2 this season. It’s only other loss came on the road against Gatorade national player of the year, Garrett Gilbert, and Austin Lake Travis.

MaxPreps Widget Helps Promote PSAL Basketball

By way of its new affiliate relationship with the venerable New York State Sportswriters Association, MaxPreps will be working this winter to help promote PSAL basketball, the New York City-based association that annually produces some of the top teams in the nation.

The NYSSWA web site, published and edited by Rochester-area media giant John Moriello, will deploy a MaxPreps data widget that will deliver all schedules, results and statistics of all teams in the PSAL to its pages. Today’s launch began with PSAL AA boys teams. More City teams are to follow, as are other teams and conferences from around the state of New York.

Check out the NYSSWA’s initial widget launch here:

http://www.newyorksportswriters.org/sports/bkb.shtml

MaxPreps.com is also pleased to announced that it will again be featuring a weekly PSAL basketball column this winter, written by its talented columnist/photographer Danny Wild, who by day is writer, editorial producer and photographer for MLB.com.

SNY Taps Widget to Promote High-Profile Event

SNY Television in New York is using the Widget to help promote and highlight its annual four-team tournament at New York University. This season’s event, scheduled for January 23-24 at the Cole Athletic Center, features another stellar lineup of entries, one that spans two boroughs and one suburban county. The semifinal round on Jan. 23 tips off at 6 p.m. with Thomas Jefferson of Brooklyn facing Section 1 kingpin Mount Vernon; that game will be followed at 8 p.m. by Boys & Girls of Brooklyn vs. St. Raymond’s of the Bronx. Last year’s event was won by the Lance Stephenson-led Railsplitters from Lincoln. These people know how to pick their teams.

http://www.sny.tv/events/sny_invitational/

PIAA District 6 Widget Takes Runaway Lead

Not only do Tom Elling and Rich Vetock produce the outstanding and wildly popular Pennsylvania Football News, their PIAA District 6 web site is a favorite stop on the scholastic Internet circuit as well. The D6 site is so popular, in fact, that it has become the early runaway leader among widgets in page views produced nationally. We haven't seen the most recent figures but as of late last week, the District 6 widget had been responsible for over 30,000 viewings. Way to work, gentleman.

http://www.piaad6.org/6fbpage.htm

Gold Beach Takes the Widget to School

Widgets aren't just for sports web sites. Gold Beach High in Gold Beach, Ore., has opted to utilize the widget data for all of its teams on the main index page of its school web site. They have strategically placed its adjacent to the Headlines & Features section and an RSS feed.

http://www.ccsd.k12.or.us/goldbeachhs/site/default.asp

First in Widgets, First in Class 6A in Illinois

They say that good things come to people who wait. They might also say that good things come to people who use the MaxPreps’ Widget.

Though exact documentation is difficult to obtain, it is widely believed that the Sacred Heart-Griffin football web site in Illinois was the first in the nation to deploy the widget earlier this fall. For that we have SHG’s Man of Steele, assistant coach Frank Steele, to thank.

Accordingly, one first-place finish has led to another. Sacred Heart-Griffin captured the 2008 Illinois Class 6A championship last Saturday, downing Lemont, 37-15, at the University of Illinois’ Memorial Stadium.

The Cyclones run a fabulous web site overall, one that is presently featuring a streaming audio re-broadcast of their state championship victory. Kudos to the Cycs both on and off the field.

http://www.shgfootball.com/site/index.shtml

http://www.shgfootball.com/site/statistics.shtml

Prattville and the Widget...What a Team!

So, you have to ask, how does the MaxPreps' widget wind up appearing so quickly in Prattville, Ala., at radio station WIQR (1410 AM)?

We don't know the real story for sure, but you can bet young Spiewak had something to do with this.

While he was working on one of our national road tours a few years ago, national football editor Steve Spiewak landed in Prattville one weekend and made immediate friends with a number of folks at WIQR , also know locally as "The Station That Stirs it Up."

Now WIQR is stirring it up and pouring out stats from 25 of its coverage-area football teams via use of the MaxPreps widget. Please visit these great promoters of high school football and give their station a listen. They also have video capabilities as well.

http://wiqrsports.com/