NOTE: This is the first of a new monthly column written by Sports Information Director Jason Knavel. The purpose of this column is to highlight our student-athletes and give our fans glimpses into the decisions and “behind the scenes” workings of the athletic department. Please feel free to e-mail comments to jknavel@mercyhurst.edu.
Change is never easy. Over the past three months I’ve been reminded of that fact; and to those faithful and regular visitors of www.hurstathletics.com, you are probably learning the same.
Since early April, the sports information department has undertaken a huge endeavor in partnering with Internet Consulting Services (ICS) to produce a new athletic web site. I’m personally pleased with what you are now seeing and satisfied that we made the right decision. But it’s been quite the journey.
The three-year contract that was signed with CSTV (now CBS College Sports) ran out at the end of June and we had the opportunity to consider new avenues to promote Mercyhurst athletics and the student-athletes that comprise our 24 varsity sports. CSTV served us well over the past three years, but ICS gives us the chance to better serve our student-athletes.
When we finally decided to make the change, I knew that there would be a large time commitment on the part of my department to give input on design, transfer files from the old site to the new one, and begin ways of better utilizing the site to promote our student-athletes. But I really wasn’t prepared for exactly how much there was to do.
In terms of the sheer volume of information that needed to be moved, there are currently over 3,000 .html pages on the new site dedicated just to season stats. The sports information department wrote 120 stories for the old web site in the month of April alone (that’s an average of just about four per day), and that’s typically a slower month for athletics at Mercyhurst. All the stories and photos from the past three years had to be transferred (which ICS helped with) and formatted so that they could be viewed on the new site. Rosters and schedules for 24 sports and bios for almost 600 student-athletes had to be reformatted to be readable on the new site, which is a pretty tedious task. My wonderful wife watched me sit at home on the computer every night after the kids went to bed for a number of weeks in a row as I copy-and-pasted bios from the old site to the new.
I’m not saying all of that to get a pat on the back for “a job well done”. I’m trying to give some perspective to ask you to bear with us through this change. One of the biggest issues currently is photos from past stories. Photos on the old site had to be a different size than they have to be on the new site and that keeps them from appearing correctly. As you see other issues, or if you have comments or ideas about how to utilize the new site, I would love to hear your thoughts.
The sports information department is often in a time-crunch, but we want to promote Mercyhurst athletics in the best way possible. When we hear a good idea, we’ll do everything in our power to implement it.
If you haven’t already, sign up for the E-Newsletter. It’s one of the handful of things that we are able to do now that we weren’t able to do with the old site. There is the possibility of adding podcasts, video highlights, and some other technological advances that just weren’t able to be done on the CSTV site. We are excited about where www.hurstathletics.com is going in the future.
Much like our move to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC), there are some bumps in road initially. But in the long-term, both changes will be better for our student-athletes.