Get a great - and affordable - Website for your School's Athletic Program
BY KIM GOSS Our full-time Webmaster Greg Minear is so busy perfecting our website that our IT Director Richard Knowley empties Greg’s trash for him! Also pictured is Art Director Steve Kinslow and a sneak peek of what our new home page looks like.
If you don’t like what your children are seeing on the Web, here’s what you can do about it About 20 years ago a psychology researcher conducted a study with a group of prisoners to determine how they distinguished between what was right and what was wrong. What the researcher did was tell the prisoners a story about a poor man who stole some expensive medicine to treat his sick wife. Then the researcher asked the prisoners if they thought it was OK for the husband to steal the medicine. They all responded, “Yes!” When asked why, the prisoners responded, in effect, “Because we’re criminals! We steal stuff – that’s what we do!” And this brings us to the Internet and kids.
The Internet is a fact of life; it’s what kids know. It’s also true that they are frequently exposed to unsuitable material online, and what they are exposed to will influence how they behave. Since it’s practically impossible to stop kids from using the Internet, the best course of action is to offer them another choice by developing your own website with positive messages. The problem is, developing websites can be expensive and a lot of work. At BFS, for example, we committed ourselves to provid- Here’s what the home page of your team page can look like, and the basic version is free!
FEATURE STORY ing our customers with an easy, secure way to order our products and to access some valuable online content such as magazine archives. Developing our website was a major expense, but we knew it would be worth it. We found that hiring website companies on a “work for hire” basis wasn’t good enough to meet our needs. That’s why last year we hired Webmaster Greg Minear, whose sole job is to work on maintaining and improving our website. That’s all he does, eight hours a day, five days a week – we don’t even let him empty his own wastebasket!
OK, that’s all well and good for BFS and our customers, but what about the coach or school that wants a team website and doesn’t have a Web guru such as Greg Minear to help them? The answer is Varsity Networks. What Varsity Networks does is provide ready-made templates for your teams to post messages, print schedules and results, publish stories about your team and player profiles, post video clips and manage e-mail accounts. You can even use it to help with fundraising, such as by opening a team store to sell team athletic clothing or calendars.
Your team’s sponsors will love this website, as it provides their companies with increased exposure, which helps their business and therefore provides incentive for continuing to sponsor your team. It’s win-win! The Web is here to stay, so why not work with Varsity Networks and take control with your own team website? It’s the right thing to do.
A player profile section and an E-store to help with fundraising can also be added to your team website.
BFS IS PROUD TO PARTNER WITH VARSITY NETWORKS IN OFFERING A VALUE PACKED, FREE, ONLINE SERVICE TO MANAGE, COMMUNICATE, SCHEDULE, AND INFORM. CONTACT YOUR BFS CLINICIAN OR EQUIPMENT REP FOR A COMPLETE RUN-THROUGH OF YOUR FREE WEBSITE AND CONTACT MANAGER weight training TEAM ASSIST WEBSITES FREE team web sites with built-in content UPGRADE to more features at a low price AUTO-LINK with other sites in your school or league Your COMMUNITY builds your team web site Share and sell team PHOTOS GET THE HELP YOU NEED FROM A TEAMASSIST WEBSITE • Use your website to share information and communicate with your team. • Varsity Networks sites are designed by coaches and players just for high school teams.
• All sites include: Rosters, Schedules, Email, Photos AND MUCH MORE!
CONTACT MANAGER & MESSENGER Varsity Networks TeamAssist Web Sites are much more than a web site for your team. Our TeamAssist Web Sites are made to support the High School sports community, and have features and functions specific to High School sports. A TeamAssist Web Site acts as a communication platform, posting messages, notifying players and parents about important information, and providing email distribution to any grouping of members. A TeamAssist Web Site centralizes team information, including schedules, rosters, field locations and necessary forms.
A TeamAssist Web Site enables teams to showcase team performance with photo galleries of the entire season, game by game, and a comprehensive History section highlighting team records and accomplishments.
DEDICATED TO HELPING ATHLETES SUCCEED SINCE 1976
From BFS Magazine — November/December 2007. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).
