Articles
Lakota West (OH) Senior aims to fight pediatric cancer and break a Guinness World Record
Ali Hausfeld, a senior at Ohio’s Lakota West HS (OH), is on a mission to raise funds and awareness for The Dragonfly Foundation. She is running the 2018 Cincinnati Flying Pig Half-Marathon in an emoji costume and attempting to break the Guinness World Record for “Fastest Half-Marathon Dressed as an Emoji”.
More here: https://westfirebirds.com/2018/04/23/help-lakota-west-senior-fight-pediatric-cancer-and-break-a-guinness-world-record/
Southlake Carroll (TX) Baseball Clinches District Title with 9-1 win over Hebron
In a surprising move, Southlake Carroll Head Coach Larry Vucan, tapped senior Kyle Warden to draw the opening start for the Dragons’ district series versus Hebron.
The deal paid off, with Warden throwing a 2-Hitter, 5 strikeout, complete game to bring the district title to Carroll HS.
The Dragons started their quest for the State Championship in the playoffs Friday night.
West Linn (OR) Wins VNN/Rapid Replay Top Play
This week, the teams at VNN and Rapid Replay awarded Top Play honors to the West Linn lacrosse (OR), pulling off an amazing double-question mark goal.
See the rest of the Top 6 from around the nation, including a web gem from Parkview (GA), walk off home run from Sandra Day O’Connor (AZ), Water polo at Timber Creek (FL), and a solid double at Ludlow (MA):
Top 6 – April 30
VNN Launches Online Shopping Platform
GRAND RAPIDS, MI, APRIL 2018- VNN, America’s largest and fastest growing high school sports communication platform, today launched Team Shops to its network of over 2,000 high school athletic department partners. A new release on VNN’s flagship SportsHub website, Team Shops give over 15% of the nation’s high school sports programs the ability to fundraise from their official home online.
A now-essential activity for sports programs nationwide, team fundraising accounts for an estimated $1.2 billion dollars in funding for the youth sports market. Despite the vast scale, team fundraisers themselves are often managed through high-effort, high-touch, in-person events and solicitations. The launch of Team Shops simplifies the fundraising process by enabling teams to raise money through the everyday purchases parents, athletes and fans make already online. In addition, campaigns that benefit united athletic funds are available to comply with Title IX requirements where applicable. At launch, each shop page includes links to product categories, gift cards, and daily deals, with plans to introduce other eCommerce opportunities yet to be announced.
“Over my 16 years of working with schools, I’ve found the biggest challenges in executing a successful fundraiser have always been distribution, time, and effort,” said VNN CRO Randy Hagg. “Going door to door, washing cars in a parking lot, and selling magazine subscriptions can be effective, but takes an absurd amount of time and effort. We’re excited to simplify fundraising for high school athletes, making it as easy as texting a link to your friends and family!”
This initiative, part of VNN’s commitment to an open future in high school athletics, is a collaboration with Toronto-based online fundraiser FlipGive.
March Webstats: Winter ESPY Awards, Curating Content and a Northeast Spotlight
An integral part of being a partner with VNN is the healthy competition between schools hoping to crack the top of our National Top 100. Producing the best content and keeping their fans excited about high school sports all help – but what are VNN’s high school athletic departments doing exactly that make the most impact? Here’s where we highlight the top schools in our network for this past month, March 2018.
North Olmstead hits #2 spot with Winter ESPYs feature:
Everyone loves a good story and North Olmstead did just that when they were setting up their Winter ESPYs award. Having the public decide based on what kind of season each boy or girl had in their respective sport and the short story about how they got there. Doing seasonal MVP’s such as this is exciting and creates friendly competition!
Hamilton Southeastern Reach #2 Spot
Hamilton Southeastern High School located in Fishers, Indiana has steadily crept up to the top of our rankings for the past two years. This last month HSE hit #2 of our 2000 plus partners! They have achieved this feat due to a few key aspects but one thing that stands out is how often they communicate with our support team. In addition to being incredible communicators they are extremely consistent at posting new and engaging content to their website. Whether it be via keeping their schedules up to date, score reporting via Pressbox, or creating photo galleries, simply posting often makes them one of VNNs top schools to watch! Here are a few examples: Meeting announcements, summer camp registration information, and daily Pressbox posts.
Welcome to the Top Tier: Cabrini Hits the Ground Running
Shortly after joining the VNN partner school family, Cabrini High School of Allen Park, Michigan has already cracked our National Top 100 coming in at a cool #100 last month. What did they do to rack up pageviews? Photos, photos and more photos! Photo Galleries are one of the easiest surefire ways to draw attention and traffic to your site, and with the Monarchs, the proof is in the pudding. Of Carbini’s total 20,396 pageviews in February, 9,986 of them stemmed from Photo Galleries–– that’s 49% of their total monthly views. Cabrini brought that heat right into their spring season! Here’s a few of our favorites: Varsity Ice Hockey vs Walled Lake Central, The Downriver Classic, Girls Basketball Senior Night.
Spotlight: Northeast Region
Pennsylvania – North Hills #1 → 49597
Each of our regions within the VNN network has shining stars, but this month we are checking in with the Northeast Region to North Hills High School. Some of our favorite articles we saw on their site, include making announcements on new coaching personnel, town hall meetings and pep rally’s! North Hills is a prime example of what curating content on the site can do for engagement. With 49,597 page views last month they are well on their way to cracking the National Top 10 in April.
Honorable mention in the Northeast Region:
Upper Saint Clair High School, Shaler High School, Norwin High School, William Tennent High School, Dock Mennonite Academy, Indiana Area High School, Hampton High School
The full Top 100 includes heavy hitters such as Temple (TX), Belton (TX), Arundel (MD), Calhoun (TX) and Scripps Ranch (CA) – see the full list here.
Now connecting: Register My Athlete
GRAND RAPIDS, MI, APRIL 2018- VNN, America’s largest and fastest growing high school sports communication platform, announced today a partnership with Utah-based Register My Athlete, an innovative provider of digital athlete registration, coach management, and injury tracking software.
The collaboration, part of a joint commitment to an open future in high school athletics, makes participating in sports easy for parents and athletes of over 2,500 high schools by integrating mandatory pre-season sign-ups inside the school’s official home online, VNN’s SportsHub platform. Athletic professionals, long demanding a more efficient way to manage daily administrative tasks, can now access each of tools they need to manage their teams from a single place, VNN Home.
Since its founding in 2012, RegisterMyAthlete has facilitated the online registration for athletes and coaches in over 3400 schools in 15 states.
“Often, the first interaction a parent has with a school is during sports registration,” said VNN Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Vaughn. “And working with a great company like RegisterMyAthlete to make the sport registration process simple, and integrated alongside the information they’ll need throughout the season was an easy decision. We’re thrilled to be connecting critical tools in the athletic department with RegisterMyAthlete, eliminating repetitive tasks and making high school sports a more connected industry.”
“As more and more companies move into the athletic management space, it is critical that we remain focused on providing solutions that add to the overall experience of parents, athletes, coaches, and administrators alike,” said Clair Anderson, CEO of Register My Athlete. “We believe that this integration with VNN will help us accomplish these objectives, while simplifying the process for all involved.”
For more information or to set up the RegisterMyAthlete to VNN integration, fill out the form here.
About VNN:
VNN is America’s largest and fastest growing high school sports communication platform. As the exclusive partner of over 20% of all US high school athletic communities, VNN connects the high school sports experience onto a single platform for 11-million passionate parents, athletes, fans, software providers, and athletic professionals across the country.
About Register My Athlete:
Founded by an Athletic Director and Athletic Trainer, Register My Athlete understands the daily challenges associated with athletic management. Starting as a simple idea to save on printing costs with Athletic Participation Packets in 2007, the product was shared between colleagues and iterated to become the product it came to be. Register My Athlete now provides solutions for State Associations, School Districts, High Schools, and Junior Highs, with a focus on Athlete, Coach, and Athletic Injury tracking and management.
The future of high school sports is a connected one
High school sports software has always been complicated. But it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
From the early days of the first scheduling platform, to things like websites, apps and athletic registration tools, software was always supposed to make life easier for Athletic Administrators.
Sometimes it worked, but too often incompatibilities between tools lead to redundancies, duplicated work, and wasted time. Entering the same data into multiple places is annoying at best. At worst, it can be the difference between finishing your tasks in time to greet families during pre-game warm-ups, or being stuck in the office doing data entry until midnight.
Since we started VNN, we heard the same refrain over and over again from our clients: “why can’t we have the software we like, and have it all just work together automatically?”
For over two decades now, something as simple as a single platform that connects all your favorite software has never been an option. But we think it should be, and together with our partners, that’s exactly what we’re creating at VNN.
After years of laying the groundwork, I’m excited to announce that VNN and our partners have now built the nation’s first ever, fully-integrated platform for high school athletics.
This means that our client schools can choose the products they love — whether that be scheduling tools like 8to18 or Arbiter, registration tools like Register My Athlete and Final Forms, or even video tools like Rapid Replay and the NFHS network — and know that the data from those products will work together across all the tools they’re using.
In other words, schools have the ability to use what they like, and it all works together automatically.
VNN has been building toward this fully-connected platform since the beginning. Several of our most popular features historically have been integrations between the VNN platform and other popular software — from the first ever open schedule-integration between companies to ensure website schedules are always up to date, to an integration with Facebook and Twitter that ensures Athletic Administrators reach their communities on all platforms, to Pressbox, the score-reporting app that ensures local media outlets across the country receive post-game updates without any duplicate reporting.
VNN’s vision has always been to create an open ecosystem for all of high school sports, where data is shared freely, making life easier for Athletic Administrators, and making high school sports a richer and even more transformative experience for athletes and their families. As we shared that big idea to other companies working in the space, we found that it wasn’t limited to only our team either. Many of those who we admired for their innovative game-changing takes on digital technology had the same perspective too. It only made sense that we should collaborate on an open future in high school sports.
This year, along with several like-minded companies across high school sports, we’re doubling down on that vision. Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks and months as we introduce our launch partners, including the best-of-the-best in:
Fundraising
Social Media
Scheduling
Event Ticketing
Registration, Rosters and Injury Tracking
Game Highlights
Athlete Recruiting Tools
With the top companies in the industry working together to make life easier and more streamlined in the Athletic Department, the future of high school sports is a connected one. We look forward to it.
Maple Grove (MN) Girls Basketball edges past St. Michael-Albertville in OT, advances to State Tourney
In a nailbiter at Buffalo High School on March 10, the Maple Grove Crimson beat top-ranked St. Michael-Albertville 59-56 in overtime to capture the Section 8AAAA title and advance to their first-ever state tournament.
The girls took on No. 4 seed Lakeville North on Wednesday, and fell, 68-66 on late free throws.
Staley High School (MO) sets schedule for Football State Championship Ring Ceremony
Remember our article this Fall about the Staley Falcon’s (MO) amazing back-and-forth final minute to win the Missouri Class 5 State Championship?
This week the school set times for the team’s Championship Ring ceremony and debuted the new design on staleyactivities.com.
From Bartlett Track (TN) to Wakanda: A Panther's Journey
Bartlett (TN) track and cross country 2010 alum Carrie Bernans was cast in the blockbuster Black Panther, as one of King T’Challa’s elite female guards and credits her background in sports at the school for getting her there.
“Being an athlete and running track really taught me that the persistence to keep going even when it hurts, even when you’re tired and don’t think you have any more is when need to give it your all because that extra effort is what is going to push you over the top.”
Read Carrie’s full story on wearebartlett.com
Life University Enrolls with VNN
Every year, high school seniors are tasked with finding the right college for them. Students will attend countless tours, read pamphlets upon pamphlets and search the web to find a school that best fits what they are looking for. In 2018, approximately 20.4 million high school seniors will apply to college across the United States.
For college admissions, finding the right students is arguably as important, with visits often proving to be an essential way to secure applications. This tactic isn’t lost on Marietta, Georgia’s Life University, whose 110 wooded acres is icing on the cake after learning about the school’s curriculum, where they lead the nation in chiropractic and holistic health programs.
Twice a year, LIFE hosts ‘Eagle Madness,’ an event that brings prospective students to campus to have an opportunity to experience what being a Running Eagle is all about. At the event, students spend the day learning about LIFE’s undergraduate and graduate degree programs, meeting with faculty and current students, and asking questions of representatives from Financial Aid, Admissions and Student Services.
To promote the event and Life University’s ongoing admissions outreach, the college is teaming up with VNN to create access to more than 100 local high school sports communities across the greater Atlanta and Cobb County areas, totaling nearly 10% of VNN’s partners in Georgia. The custom campaign includes display advertising and native content, while also delivering personalized executions at the school-level through VNN’s local sales team, which includes large-format banners that are hung in the gym and football fields. Go Running Eagles!
Interested in connecting your brand to thousands of high school sports communities across the U.S.? Visit our advertising page for a Media Kit and more info.
Northmont (OH) honors 1988 Boys Varsity Baseball
Last night, the annual Northmont Baseball Hall of Fame banquet honored the 1988 Thunderbolt team. Thirty years ago, the squad finished 7th in the Ohio State Poll, winning the Greater Miami Valley Conference championship with an overall 25-8 record (11-3 within GMVC) and Districts in the State Playoffs.