As we reach the end of another amazing DIII season, we here at the Blog would like to commend you all for making DIII Tennis the great sport that it is today. Without your play, readership, coaching, enthusiasm, and all those other factors, we honestly would have nothing to write about. And I’d have nothing to do on weekends. All jokes aside, the Blog team hopes you feel that this sport continues to grow and most importantly, DIII in particular continues to grow and become more and more important. That is, after all, the goal of this site. It has been another milestone year for us – we just reached 2.5MM views since the end of 2012 on this site, and this will mark the most viewed year of the Blog in it’s history. To recap the year, we added two new “sections” in D3RegionalNEC and D3RegionalAS, debuted the successful idea of the Recruiting Hub, introduced a new weekly article in “This Week in Highlights,” introduced the News Ticker to the top of the site, completed our first two “Live Blogs,” and of course, debuted the Van Zee Vault, which features Adam Van Zee’s unique take on schools/coaching/DIIITennis as well as provides you with interviews with some of the best coaches in DIII today.
The point of this post is to continue to improve this site and reach new heights – and that is driven from you, the readers. Yes, we will be back next year (hooray). If you all could provide some feedback for us in any of the bulletpoints below, that would be great and potentially something we look into next year! We will take all feedback, we’re not afraid to stick our necks out! Don’t be afraid to write a comment, good or bad. It’s great to hear you all.
Feel free to also email me at d3atlanticsouth@gmail.com if you have suggestions you’d like to keep private. Thanks to all of you for a great year, and we still have 3 great days to go!
1) Constructive Feedback for the blog – anything from writing styles, types of articles, etc
2) Suggestion Articles – anything that you would have loved to see that we can explore for next year?
3) Praise! – What did we do well this year?
4) Twitter Presence – any feedback regarding our twitters. Too many tweets, too much commentary, etc, etc? Anything else you’d like to see?
5) The Site – we’re not site masters, so let us know if you think you can improve the site!
6) The Recruiting Hub! – With this being a new project, we’d love to hear your feedback on this and we can work to make it even better than it is now.
7) Van Zee Vault/Podcasts – Another new project, this has been an undertaking for us that I believe to be successful. Thanks to Adam for some amazing articles and podcasts this year, and here’s to many more.
8) Misc. – Anything that came to you during the year and you wanted to let us know but were scared to.
9) General Ideas/Thoughts – with a face to one of our names, what are some cool things you think we can do for next year? Anything to get you all more interacted with the blog?
10) Women’s Writing – This is something that I would like to get into and give some more explanation on our thoughts. All of us here at the Blog are a huge proponent of DIII Women’s Tennis. Being able to watch the Women’s Finals these past few days has been really fun for us to follow, despite our general lack of knowledge about the players. The honesty is this – the writers at the Blog come from Men’s teams, whether they be coaching, players, parents, or fans. Their passion is in DIII Men’s Tennis, and this is our hobby. It would be unfair to them and unfair to me to ask them or myself to write about something that they are not as knowledgeable about as well as not as enthusiastic about.
I have received interest in the past about writing for the Women’s side of the Blog. That is absolutely true. However, the fact of the matter is that with my actual life/job + running the Men’s part of this site, I simply do not have the time nor the enthusiasm that is necessary to provide you all with a product that is deserving of DIII Women’s Tennis. What I need is this – if you are interested in running the Women’s portion of the site, please let me know. What that side needs is someone who can match my enthusiasm for Men’s Tennis. I will absolutely be of as much help as I can to help you organize, find writers, and build a following from scratch. We can work together. I just cannot run that side. If you are willing to try this out, please let me know. I hope you all understand.
11) NEW WRITERS – As you all know, we are always looking for new writers. We may or may not have a couple of new openings – if you have any interest in writing whatsoever, please reach out to me via my email, d3atlanticsouth@gmail.com. I will determine if you are a great fit for our team as well as what your role will be. We have been very flexible in the past, and we love anyone that has enthusiasm for DIII Tennis.
I’d like to end this post by again thanking you all for a great season. We are not done yet, as we will have individuals coverage as well as giving out some End of Season Awards as we do every year. Also, the Recruiting Hub will continue to live and be updated throughout the summer to include as many teams as possible. Thank you again, and for the almost final time of the 2016-2017 season…. ASouth, OUT.
A+ on content, tone, and editorial direction… but one suggestion on a current formatting change.
It appears some re-design may be underway, and perhaps the current state is temporary. If not, I suggest returning to a full content page (men’s and women’s) with small buttons on the header for anyone wishing to filter for either men’s or women’s content, with the default view being “all”.
By forcing a choice between a men’s or women’s view, the user may never make the extra effort to view the other gender. In my case, I am primarily interested in the men’s game, yet because the content has been mixed, I have stumbled upon some interesting and inspiring women’s stories.
If I am forced to choose, I will always chose the men’s filter… and may not return to the women’s page… which would be a shame, as I have enjoyed the coverage.
By continuing to mix content and placing filtering buttons in the header, the user can continue to ignore one gender with the same ease as today (today, you have to select men’s or women’s; and if you instead placed filtering buttons on the header, you would similarly have to chose gender; there would be no additional effort for those wishing to ignore one gender over the other).
But for the rest of us, we wouldn’t have to take the current extra step of filtering every time we entered the site… and the default view would expose us to mixed content that is worth seeing.
This is a fantastic callout and one that we will be looking into as we go through our site re-design. Thanks so much for your input! More changes to come, and we’re continuing to stay flexible as we try to make this an awesome experience for all of our readers!
Many thanks. Last take on this (I know its tedious!)… I’d recommend displaying all results as default. Viewers come to the page looking to be entertained/informed by a big new headline… but they probably don’t want to make choices for viewing options before getting to see the actual content. Provide “all” as the default, and for those wishing to dive into one gender or the other, they could select a discreet filtering “button” in the header or in the side window. Looking forward to another great season- the site and info are awesome. Thx.
We just want to thank you for all your time and great passion! We loved reading this blog and seriously appreciated it for the last 4 seasons. Going to keep it bookmarked in my fave bar and continue reading even though we have a graduate! Thanks again!!!
I just want to thank the blog for the writeup about mike buxbaum. His injury was tough for him and our family and I’d like to thank you and the many d3 players and coaches who were so supportive. Go D3 tennis
One suggestion, which will probably be tough to implement: it would be great to do an interview with or get real feedback from the actual members of the NCAA committee(s) that didn’t approve increasing the number of Pool C spots this year, to understand their rationale, their view of prospects for implementing that change in the future, and anything the D3 community can do to help effect that change.
I mostly just want to say thank you. You do a phenomenal job. I continue to be amazed by the effort, commitment and time you put into this. Your writing is fun, fresh and lively, which makes it entertaining for everyone. I agree with the other commenter that I’d welcome some way for you to monetize your efforts.
I especially loved the live chat (and Q&A) around selection day this year.
Thanks for another fantastic season; I’ve been reading the blog since its inception (Fall 2007) and the depth and overall quality of coverage improves each year.
This may be old-fashioned to say, but I especially enjoy the prediction pieces, which help orient us for the matches and drive anticipation. I may have noted this in years past, but I’m partial to the roundtable-style pieces, as they offer multiple lenses through which to approach the match(es).
Personally, I’d rather not see current coaches write articles, as I could see this degenerating into a kind of public relations arm of the blog. The podcasts, by contrast, feel more like an organic conversation on the state of D3 (it helps that AVZ has a real talent for eliciting thoughtful responses from guests), while also offering the coach the opportunity to discuss the particularities of their program. In the absence of the conversational structure of the podcasts, I envision articles authored by coaches crossing the line into promotional material.
Again, thanks to each of the authors for your excellent work.
Thanks again for a great season of blogging. Your passion definitely comes through in all you do. As far as my suggestions go:
-Maybe give coaches and/or assistants an opportunity to write occasional articles that could be featured. Possibly even alumni could be included in this. Anything to get people involved will strengthen the site and content.
-Podcasts were my favorite thing you did all season. It would be great to get some players on it and possibly alumni as well. It would also be nice if more video could be included next year somehow.
-Recruiting hub was a great idea. As you build this I could see this evolve with linking to recruiting pages for the schools. Would also be great if coaches could put in their two cents with their coaching philosophy or any other resources they would want to post.
-Have you thought about finding a way of monetizing the site with ads or partnering with someone like http://www.d3sports.com or other tennis sites? For the time commitment and all the traffic you are getting it would be nice to find a way to compensate the bloggers (or pay for them to travel to big tournaments) and maintain and enhance the site for the future. At the very least maybe include a donation button?
Overall, you all deserve huge praise for creating such a great community. As an alumni from 20 years ago I really enjoy reconnecting to the current teams and watching how D3 tennis has progressed over the years (I’m still impressed how Coach Hansen is still going strong – I will never forget how much of a beast UC Santa Cruz was in the mid-90s, and boy the UAA has sure changed a lot – with the exception of Emory still being dominate of course!)
Congrats to the blog on another tremendous season. Seriously, the amount of work that you guys put into not only covering D3 tennis but also enhancing the fans’ experience is commendable. *finger snap applause*
Some random thoughts:
1. It would be cool if the News Ticker linked to the box score of the match.
2. The AVZ podcasts are awesome. One suggestion is to include in the article the times when AVZ asks a new question and what the question was. This way people can easily jump around the podcast.
So for example: 2:05 “Whats your favorite color?”
7:14 “Favorite 1D song?”
11:52 “Hot dog or no hot dog?, etc
3. Love the recruiting hub. Would be cool if you guys could connect recruits to alumni.
4. Live stats are great and all but they leave to be desired. This isn’t a suggestion but more a thought: I wonder if there’s a way for the Blog to work with schools that can’t afford Playsight to instead affordably live stream there matches through some other means. Maybe it’s a pipe dream but where there’s a will there’s a way (sometimes).
That’s all I got. Thanks again for doing what you do. I’m excited to see what the blog has in store for next season!
Good ideas! Thanks for the feedback!
– we’re gonna add coach e-mails to the recruiting hub pronto
– we’ll definitely provide some podcast timestamps in the future
– we’ve already started working on box scores for the ticker
– regarding live-streaming all matches… well… Periscope is free and easy for anyone with a smart phone to use… I’ve got no other ideas.