ArkansasTrackStats

ArkansasTrackStats.com

Commentary.......Message from the Publishers: Our First Year

7/15/2001

Last July we introduced ArkansasTrackStats.com as a unique service to promote high school cross-country and track and field in Arkansas. We were scrambling to get organized and try to get something ready for the fall cross-country season. Since then we have come a long way.

First, let us express our appreciation to the many users of the website for visiting the site and telling others about the site. In our first year we had over 11,000 hits to the site with May 2001 setting a monthly record at about 2300....this in spite of a nasty failure at the company hosting the site which put us really behind. While these are small numbers compared to the national websites, we are excited about the numbers reached and the growth.

Second, we need to recognize the coaches and others who have helped along the way. Kathy Tadlock at the Arkansas Activities Association has been very helpful in helping us get state meet results and pointing us in the right directions when she did not have what we were looking for. Without Coach Karl Koonce at Lake Hamilton High School we would never have set out to create the site as he encouraged us, gave us plenty of useful tips on who to contact as well as helping us gets meet results and in introducing us to the Track Coaches Association. Likewise Coach Clint Pevril of Mt. Home has been very good to keep us up-to-date on Track Coaches Association events, providing a variety of meet results and submitting articles for our Commentary section. Numerous others have also been most helpful along the way in various ways including Coach Efurd (Rogers), Coach Elias (UALR), Coach Foster (Russellville), Terri Harrison (Heber Springs...and all the Heber crew at the indoor meets who got us the complete results on diskette), Coach Knight (Vilonia), Coach Krumwiede (Berryville), Coach Lawrence (Marion), Morry Sanders (Arkansas Vault Academy), Coach Westbrook (Bryant) and Coach Willsey (Acorn). I apologize if I left anyone out as so many have been supportive of our efforts.

Third, we are pleased to have brought to the state a comprehensive listing of all performances that we learn about. We are always looking for more sources of results as we know there are some meets we never are able to get full results. While we much appreciate having results sent to us, even getting the name/number or email address of someone to contact can be helpful. If you know of a meet that you do not see show up in our Best Performance Listings, please let us know. All in all our 2000 Cross-Country Best Performances Listings included 1,284 (595 Girls and 689 Boys) athletes for just senior high races!! The 2001 Track and Field Best Performances Listings included 2,817 performances (1,402 Girls and 1,415 Boys)!!!!

Fourth, we became the Arkansas correspondent for Dyestat, the national website exclusively for high school cross-country and track and field in the United States. If you have not visited DyeStat, go to National Sites in our Links section. John Dye does a terrific job covering the sports and he gave Arkansas nice attention and coverage this past year. Check out DyeStat and leave John an email that you heard about him from us.

Fifth, we became the home of the Arkansas All-Time Best Performances Listings this past January. While we have been slow getting the Listings updated we are making progress and now have all 2001 results included. These Listings were started by Coach Richardson at Crossett and transferred to us by Coach Efurd at Rogers. We are always on the lookout for performances to include that have been overlooked and appreciate any help you can give us. Understand that we have to confirm performances in some way to try to ensure accuracy. These are not just state meet results but performances at any official meet. We hope these listings serve as a great source of inspiration to our young athletes of today to see if they can knock some of us old geezers out of the top ranks. Check out the Listings under Track and Field to see just how few of us old timers are still near the top!!!

What might you look for this next year?

Our primary focus will continue to be on Best Performances, the All-Time Best Listings and State Meet reporting. We plan to continue to add prior year's State Meet (and Decathlon/Heptathlon) results as we are able. Along the way we will try to add some fun things like Fantasy Results and how Arkansas performances compare to national results. We will try to expand the number of college coaches we reach so they can use our data for recruiting purposes. We will also seek to expand the number of regular contributors of meet results and the number of sports media persons and encourage them to cover these great sports. We will try to keep ads and commercials off the site although we might find a need to generate revenues in some way to help us keep the site current and available to our users free of charge. Our R&D Group is working on better ways to enter meet results to improve our speed of reporting results and the accuracy of data entry.

Thanks again for being part of this effort. Pass the word as well.

We are always interested in hearing from you, so please do not hesitate to send your comments to kellyfam@cox-internet.com.