My main priority over the last 4 months was to keep the content up to date so I didn’t do much with the design or layout.  Now that we’ve hit the off-season I’ve been trying to spiff up the site a bit. This was first stab at doing a blog so most of the layout and features I copied from other sites but other features I’ve had to research to figure out how they work. I was just able to figure out how to make a scrolling text box which I thought was kind of neat and I’ve recently learned how to make a picture in picture page (iframe) where you can have as many different windows within a page as you want (see scoreboard pic on bottom). It seems like to do anything semi-complex you have to understand html and I’m learning more about it daily.

As you’ll notice I’ve changed the main header and I’ve put some ads in a few different spots. My goal wasn’t to get rich doing this blog but I wouldn’t mind making a few bucks so if one of the ads interests you give it a click (if it doesn’t then don’t click) – I think I get a fraction of a penny for each click or something so maybe by the end of the year I can buy myself a Big Mac.

I’d like to work towards getting some sponsors over the summer so we’ll see how that goes. If any of you readers work for/own a company and would like to advertise send me an Email and I’m sure we can work out the details. Obviously tennis related products, camps, info would make the most sense. One of my goals is to find a title sponsor i.e College Tennis Today presented by XYZ Company so I’d like to think that could be mutually beneficial for both parties. I’ve also had several suggestions about growing the site from some of my readers and those have all been very helpful as well.

My goal with this site is to make it as close to a one-stop shop as you can find when it comes to D1 Men’s Tennis. I’ve always thought if you can make something easy to follow then people will follow and that’s my philosophy with college tennis and this blog. I’ll try to keep improving it as much as possible and suggestions are always welcome.

When I first started the blog I thought maybe 25 to 30 people might look at it but to my surprise the page views kept growing.  I want to thank all the people that retweeted and favorited my tweets to help spread the word because without those I wouldn’t have been able to grow the blog to where it is today.

Page View Numbers since starting the blog at the end of January:
Total page views: 142,500
Best Month: May 47,000
Most Viewed Blog Post: Final Ranking Projections 1900
Most Viewed Page: Live Scoring Links 11000

I’ll be honest with you I don’t really know if these numbers are that impressive in comparison to others but they’ve blown me away none the less. I’m excited to see how well the site can do next season with a full head of stream.

My favorite post was the story I did about Ohio State’s 200-match winning streak. For those that didn’t read it or didn’t find my blog until later in the season I was able to determine that Ohio State’s 200-match home winning streak was actually just a 199-match winning streak. Fortunately Ohio State did get win #200 before losing to Oklahoma but thanks to me they got to celebrate win #200 twice.

Upcoming Posts:

Over the summer I’m going to try and create a team page for all the teams in the power 5 conferences along with a few others. I thought it’d be nice to have 1 page where you could see a team’s roster, stats, recruits, schedule, coach, and facility all in one place.  I kind of randomly chose Duke as my first one so hopefully all the iframes come through on the particular browser that you’re viewing. Let me know what you think of Duke’s page – too much info, doesn’t load properly, great to see it all on one page, etc.

Weekly Sunday post with how the guys have done on the Future/Challenger circuit.

Ideas To Explore:

Creating a conference/top 25 scoreboard for next year (see pic) – it’d be nice to see them all on 1 page instead of having to toggle back and forth between 10 different windows. I’d probably be able to work something up for video too though that’d require a little more work since so many of the links change for each match. Click here to see it in action; what is linked is just a starting point I’d probably be able to clean it up and maybe space them out a little more.  Let me know your thoughts on this too – good/bad/ugly?

Look into developing an app for the site – never done one so it’d be a learning experience.

Having a College Tennis Today match of the month where I’d go to a school and maybe do some pre & post match interviews along with taking some video clips similar to what I did at the MVC Tournament and NCAAs. This would depend on funding and/or if any school was interested in paying me to help give them more exposure. I realize budgets aren’t exactly overflowing but I wouldn’t be too expensive 😉

Possible Schedule for Next Season
I’d like to make it to Charlottesville for the National Team Indoors and I hope to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to Tulsa for the NCAAs next May. I’d love to make it out to Los Angeles for the Pac 12/SEC Challenge (UCLA, USC, Georgia, Florida) in late January though that’s only a few weeks before the National Indoors so I’m not sure I can swing 2 trips in 3 weeks. If Illinois schedules a strong out of conference slate like they normally do I’ll try to make it over to Champaign at least once since that is only a 2 hour 45 minute drive.

I’ve enjoyed the interaction with you guys/gals and I can talk college tennis 24-7 so if you’ve got some good info about your team that you’d like to share don’t hesitate to reach out to me.