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October 5, 2005

High school sports in the electronic age

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist


Advances in electronics have been impacting high school sports for quite a while. There are the new scoreboards at the fields and in the gyms, wireless headphones for coaches on the football sidelines, the games on video or digital video instead of film – many of these changes happened a while ago.

Recently the play-by-play coverage of many high school games has become available online, generally through the website of the radio station carrying the game – like Oldies 94 or 98.7-The Coast.

There are websites devoted to leagues (like Cape-AtlanticLeague.com), team sites (OceanCitySports.com), sites devoted to stats and results (PrimeEvents.net), plus newspaper sites that include game stories and columns. If you know what you are doing, you can follow pretty much any team in America on the web. The NJSIAA even offers its playoff pairings and results on its website, along with rules and regulations.

Most sites offer some photos and some make video clips available. It won’t be too long before you’ll be able to listen to your favorite high school games on your cell phone, anywhere in the country.

In addition to satisfying the fervent fan, these options also give a grandmother living in Virginia a chance to listen to her grandson play football in South Jersey. Or a college student a chance to follow his/her alma mater.

Another innovation during this age of technology is the online forum. One newspaper has a forum where you can question its columnists, which probably leads the writer to some column topics. There is a forum to ask officials about the rules and many others dealing with similar topics.

The good thing about these forums is, like radio talk shows, they give a voice to those who aren’t usually heard. Though a lot more opinions can be heard online than on the air. The bad news is, since the postings are virtually anonymous, sometimes the opinions can get nasty and personal.

If visiting these forums recently, you would find a discussion about how high St. Joe’s Jack Corcoran might go in college football. There was a preview (sort of) of Friday night’s Oakcrest-Vineland football game and a debate about whether Camden Catholic would beat St. Joe in football.

Another forum discussed Duran Neil’s transfer from Egg Harbor Township to Pleasantville, who will win the boys basketball game between Atlantic City and Haddonfield (Dec. 18 in Ocean City) and how much Absegami’s Ben Walsh improved in golf.

One soccer entry was a brief game summary of “Middle vs Augy (St. Augustine Prep)”: It said, “augy won 3-1. well played game by both teams. augy had a lot of offense and opportunities. middle had some nice looks but not enough to knock off the strong team from richland.”

As in many emails, punctuation and capitalization are sporadic in many of these posts.

There was this discussion of an upcoming Ocean City boys soccer game: “Does OC really have a night game at Carey Stadium this year? It's on the schedule at highschoolsports.net versus Eastern Regional.” That was followed by “a home game with Eastern at 5:00 on Mon, 10/24 at Carey Field (football field behind school on 6th St). So, if you call 5:00 a night game, then yes. Looking into the crystal ball says the game gets cancelled as both teams may want to concentrate on tournaments and the fact that they both may go deep in coaches tournament, and possibly even meet each other. Stay tuned...”

Another soccer entry referred to a game in the National Conference: “St Joe's finally played a decent team and it showed in the results. Wildwood Catholic 2, St Joe 1.”

There is also this item in girls soccer, supporting one of the CAL’s top players: “Tara Davies will play at Penn State. She plays on the Match Fit club team and excels with them. She has scored almost 100 goals while sometimes being quadruple teamed. She is the real deal and will be an impact player at Penn State, maybe not her freshman year, but eventually she will. Best of luck, Tara. Show us who is right.”

And how about this early analysis of the Absegami-Lower Cape May boys basketball game (opening night, Dec. 16): “Lower will lose this year to them. I know Lower took them last year but this year Gami has a different coach, different style of play and are just better all around. Their coach played on Middle Twp. State Championship Team back in the early 90's. He knows what it takes to get these kids going. Lower does have Charles Johnson, who is probably better than any of the Gami guards, but they have no one to match the big man and he will control both ends of the court. Lower's best chance is to speed the game up and make Gami's big man tire out and sit down.”

There is a lot of information on these forums. These were just a few items that pertain to the CAL. You have to sort through the info yourself and, as you do, you’ll find that some of the “facts” are just not factual.

But, when the participants avoid the personal attacks, the kind of comments they would not dare make to the person’s face, these forums – like the online broadcasts, websites and other technological advances – can just make high school sports more interesting and more fun.



Read more of Tom Williams' columns