‘I’m back’ … A new source of HS sports news in Schuylkill County launches today

I’m baaaaaack. … Did ‘ya miss me?

Those printed words don’t have the same flair and pizzazz as when Stephen A. Smith returns from vacation on ESPN’s First Take show, but the impact is the same.

After a four-month hiatus, I’m back doing what I do best, covering Schuylkill County high school sports. And I couldn’t be happier. Hopefully you are too.

Over the past four months I’ve heard your complaints about local sports coverage everywhere I went. And I get it.

For 22 years I served as the sports editor of the local newspaper, telling the stories of the teams, athletes and coaches that made Schuylkill County great. When you count the years I spent working there as a sports correspondent and as a full-time sportswriter from 1991-2000, for 31 years I was a part of the fabric of local high school and youth sports, writing stories that made magical moments last forever.

In March I made the decision to walk away from that post. It was an incredibly tough decision … because I felt I was leaving the people of Schuylkill County down. The best part of being a sportswriter is the relationships you develop and foster over time, those ties with coaches, administrators, athletes, parents, grandparents and fans. Over the past four months, those relationships disappeared. And I missed that.

Today starts a new chapter in my sports writing career — the launch of Schuylkill County’s first-ever high school sports website, T102SportsNow.com. It’s the future … Schuylkill County’s newest online source for high school sports coverage.

The brainchild of WPPA/T-102 sports director Chaz Hepler and myself, T102SportsNow.com and its accompanying app will include in-depth features, breaking news, detailed game coverage, real-time scores, standings, statistics, video interviews and much more. That content will be produced by veteran sportswriters with decades of newspaper experience, names you’ve become familiar with over the years, guys like Bob Lipsky, Eli Doyle, Charlie Roth, Doyle Dietz and others.

You won’t have to wait for it … it will be “now.”

Wait, there’s more.

The first edition of a weekly podcast called “4^th and Short” featuring Eli and myself will appear on the site later this week and include interviews done at Wednesday’s Schuylkill County Football Coaches Association Media Day. Minersville players Dante Carr and Easton Schultz, Nativity’s Noah Dolbin, Marian coach Billy O’Gurek and senior Michael Gelatko, Pottsville coach Mike Brennan and Schuylkill Haven’s Mike Farr and Niko Carestia are the guests for Week 1.

WPPA’s weekly Touchdown Tips football prognostication show will become a video show, where you’ll not only get to read our picks in printed form on the website but see us make our selections. There are also plans to make the football picks interactive and have local sports fans participate. Stay tuned.

T102SportsNow.com will be a one-stop shop for everything you need to know about Schuylkill County sports. It will include links to WPPA’s live broadcasts of Pottsville Crimson Tide football and the T-102 Game of the Week. There will be links to every website you need to obtain information on local sports, sites like the PIAA, District 11 and Schuylkill League websites and the sites of other local media outlets.

There’s still more.

The website will provide Schuylkill County sports fans the opportunity to submit their own content — stories, photos, videos, etc. — that will post in the community sections of those sports. In every story that appears on the site, every person mentioned in the story will be tagged. You will be able to search the site based on a particular athlete and find every story that athlete is mentioned in. Good item to have when college recruiters come calling.

While the site will be football-heavy to start, the goal is provide extensive, in-depth coverage of every Schuylkill League high school sport. For those fans of the non-football fall sports, give us some time to get organized. There will be some patience required as we get all the bugs worked out.

The best part of the site is that it’s free, funded by advertisers. All you have to do is go to the site and register.

Over the years I’ve covered PIAA state finals/championships in 10 sports, was on hand for Railway Park’s capacity crowd night game at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, covered professional boxing matches in Palo Alto and at Hegins Park, chronicled countless county golf tournaments, local road races and Cycle 17 bike races and wrote stories on local athletes who went on to win NCAA championships, become NCAA Division I college coaches, play in the NFL and play Major League Baseball. Those are memories that will last a lifetime.

It’s time to make new ones … on T102SportsNow.com.