Leading off today: ESPN has moved into a clear lead in online high school sports coverage among national mainstream media with the official launch today of
ESPNRISE.COM.
The site integrates many of the acquisitions and original ESPN products from the past 18 months and is being touted as "a complete source for national high school sports and lifestyle coverage, as well as a community connecting 14- to 18-year-old athletes to each other, their sports passions and friends and families."
Content comes from a variety of stand-alone sites and brands including Rise magazine, Girl magazine, HoopGurlz.com, Dyestat.com and regional sites focusing on scholastic sports in Maryland and California.
Young athletes will be able to establish MySpace-like profile pages, create group pages centered on specific schools or teams, write blogs, and upload videos and photos.
ESPN's press release says the site will launch with coverage concentrated on high school football, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, volleyball, track and cross country. In addition, New York and the other states have dedicated content pages.
Section 5 giant dies: Bob Thompson, the longtime media and public relations director for Section 5 boys basketball before stepping down in 1991, died Friday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 67, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.
He was part of Bill Farrell's sectional and state organizing committees that resurrected the New York State Public High School Athletic Association tournament in 1978 after a 45-year absence. Rochester hosted the event from 1978-80.
"Bob was Section 5 basketball," former state and sectional chairman Gene Johnson told the paper. "Bill and myself were credited with a lot of the success, but the real key behind Section 5 basketball was Bob. He would do anything he could to help those kids. He spent countless hours developing the programs and was a great person."
One of Thompson's legacies is the annual Section 5 boys basketball tournament handbook, a 64- to 72-page monster full of statistics, photos, rosters for every team and records. It rivals the quality of publications put out by mid-major Division I college conferences.
Thompson, a former BOCES administrator who served as interim superintendent at several Rochester-area school districts, was also a fixture in the media room at numerous professional golf tournaments in Rochester.
Latest developments in Crespi case: The state attorney general's office has declined to join local prosecutors who are pressing a felony assault charge against former Wallkill
