posted on December 18, 2009 11:36
Contact: John Johnson or Andy Frushour
517.332.5046 or [email protected]
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Dec. 18 – With the Winter sports season wrapping up its first month, the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Website – MHSAA.com – is becoming populated with basketball schedules and scores - a popular feature of the redesigned site.
This is the first year the website is carrying scores other than football – where schedules and results being input by schools was required for conducting the MHSAA Playoffs. With each passing day, more and more schools are posting their schedules and scores to MHSAA.com.
Visitors to the website can see statewide schedules and scores for a single day or range of games. As the site becomes more populated with data, a visit to a school’s individual page puts you a click away from viewing their information.
“At this time, we’re getting between 100 and 200 basketball scores in for each gender on Tuesdays and Fridays, and we expect that to grow as the season progresses and more individuals sign up to report scores and more schools embrace the crowdsourcing nature of the score reporting system,” said Andy Frushour, Marketing & Special Programs Coordinator for the MHSAA. He added that bowling, ice hockey and wrestling schedules and scores have also been put online by some schools.
While schools are encouraged to input scores and schedules on its own, the crowd – which includes all registered users on MHSAA.com – is needed to help fill the gaps. Anyone can fill out the simple registration form on MHSAA.com and immediately begin reporting scores. Users can then add scores to the website as soon as the final buzzer sounds in high school gyms across Michigan.
Registered users have the ability to add an event to a school’s schedule or add a score from a completed contest. If a score is reported inaccurately, users can also “dispute” a reported score. School administrators, coaches and MHSAA staff are given additional privileges to edit disputed contest information. In the future, registered users who have a proven track record of reporting scores can become Authorized Score Reporters and will also be given enhanced editing capabilities to edit scores and schedules from around the state.
Over the course of the fall sports season, MHSAA.com Website had over 10 million unique page views – with over half of those views generated by visits to the football information, scores, schedules and playoff point summary pages of the site. The website site averaged over 14,000 visitors daily, and during the playoffs, that number soared to over 30,000 on the days the playoff pairings were announced and playoff games were taking place.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by over 1,600 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract approximately 1.6 million spectators each year.
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