D3soccer.com Year Nine: State of the Website

By Christan Shirk

Nine autumns ago Jim Matson launched D3soccer.com and in fits and starts the website has grown and evolved to its current state—far from all it could be, but still, we believe, a useful resource for fans and a valuable tool to recognize the student-athletes, coaches and teams that compose Division III soccer. The site remained somewhat obscure during those first few years, but that began changing in part due to the 2009 inauguration of the D3ssocer.com Top 25 as a true national poll and alternate to what the NSCAA has to offer. At the close of that following season, 2010, All-American teams were selected and honored by the website for the first time. The following year, 2011, was the first season with a complete database of games and with standings and schedules for every conference. The 2011 postseason marked the launch of Conference Championship Central and NCAA Tournament Central.

With those additions, now mainstays for the site, we were at our capacity because the website might best be described as a spare-time hobby of ours—a hobby we are passionate about and take seriously, but nevertheless of secondary priority to family and paying day jobs. As Jim and I had increasingly less time (and energy) to devote to the site due to family and work, the question about whether to continue loomed over recent off-seasons. In the summer of 2014 the site not only left the D3sports network, but we nearly chose to close shop. We didn’t, and thanks to a wave of volunteer contributors we were able to add a number of weekly columns last year.

Now we are back in the thick of another season, serving the D-III soccer community as best we can in year nine. And we have been pleased to have made some changes and additions heading into and during the current season that we believe improve the site. Some have been rather obvious (e.g. the new logo) while others have may have gone unnoticed by some (e.g. the list of remaining unbeaten teams). To make sure the less noticeable ones are not missed and do not go under-utilized, I want to mention some of the new additions and comment on a variety of changes.

Changes and Additions in 2015

New Logo – With the departure from the D3sports network, a new logo was required and finally a year late we have introduced our replacement, relegating last year’s clip-art place holder to the dust bin. It’s a fairly straight forward logo with no subtleties or hidden meanings except for the “07” on the soccer shoe which represents the founding year of the website.

New Header Collage – A long overdue update of the website’s header became a reality as a new photo collage that intentionally highlights the current men’s and women’s national champions. Ideally the header will be updated on an annual basis website with a nod to the new champions.

New Navigation Bar / Pull-down Menus – Another area that could have used improvement for some time now, the navigation bar underwent some changes highlighted mostly by the new pull-down menus that have been added. The bigger additions and changes with the pull-down menus are as follows:

Preseason Conference Polls – A list of all conference favorites with links to the conferences’ preseason poll results was introduced this year. When this is not a featured headline (i.e. outside of the preseason and opening week), it can be accessed from the “News” and “Rankings” menus.

Coaching Milestones – As a flurry of coaching milestones were reached in the first few weeks of this season, Coaching Milestones (similar to our long-standing Coaching Carousel) was launched as a way to both provide a convenient repository and to allow us to acknowledge all coaches reaching milestones without log-jamming our homepage with multiple headlines when six milestones are reached in two days as happened two weeks ago. When this is not a featured headline, it can be accessed from the “News” menu.

Top 25 Scoring – The scoring for our Top 25 rankings has been revised. Instead of a raw number of points directly from the ballots, scoring is out of a maximum of 1000 points. This allows for consistency week to week even when a coach/SID or two is unable to vote due to something unforeseen arising or an unexpectedly high workload.

Ryan’s Ruminations – Ryan Harmanis started writing for the website in November 2013 and this year, as our lead columnist, we have set him free to do our site’s first weekly opinion piece that we have named “Ryan’s Ruminations”. If you haven't done so already, please check out this new column.

Future Changes and Additions

There are plenty of ideas for new features, but as stated in the opening, we have been at our capacity for several years now making new additions rather difficult if not impossible. The addition of the Preseason Conference Polls and the Coaching Milestones were possible and hopefully maintainable in future seasons because they either require minimal time and effort (Preseason Polls) or are mostly just a change in how we present and package content (Coaching Milestones).

We had a poll on our homepage early in the season asking for feedback on some potential new features. The two ideas that garnered the most support are a tracker of Division III players now playing professionally and a Preseason Top 25. Eliciting half as much support as those two ideas are Preseason Conference Polls (which we had already initiated) and a “Where are they now?” feature that catches up with former Division III soccer standouts.

We would love to be able to provide all of these features, but alas we can only do so much. We will regularly re-consider and re-evaluate the feasibility of launching and maintaining these and other potential features. Some might only become a reality with your help. For example, a list of D-III payers currently playing professional soccer could be built by allowing (and depending on) you, the visitors to our site, to submit the names and details of players via an on-line submission form. Others may require a fan (or fans) of our site to volunteer to come on board and take responsibility for one of these new features.

Getting Involved, Joining the Effort

Jim and I are just a pair of guys who love soccer and Division III athletics. And we were passionate enough about Division III soccer to think we could run a website devoted to it despite no background in journalism, communication, website design or maintenance, etc. We’ve had a lot of help to build the site into what it is today, from the immense support provided by the D3sports network to all the named and unnamed volunteer contributors/writers over the years.

We will always need new volunteer contributors/writers, but help in other areas is also needed to maintain and especially to grow the site. If you also have a passion for Division III soccer and would like to contribute to the success of the website, we welcome your inquiry. It’s important to know that this is a labor of love and not a source of income, and as is true with most ventures, commitment and reliability on the part of all team members is crucial. Send us an e-mail to express your interest in getting involved.

One of the biggest needs we have is for competent copy editors (proof readers) who can ensure that the volunteer contributions we receive meet a certain standard of quality before being published on the site. An increase in original content on the site (e.g. weekly regional recaps) depends on having copy editors on the team. As we add copy editors, we can add more writers/columnists, so please do express interest in writing for the site as well, but be aware we may not be able to take advantage of your offer until we have sufficient copy editors on board.

There is also plenty of behind the scenes grunt work that goes into a website like this, both in the off-season (e.g. setting up 850+ team and 80+ conference pages for the new season) and during the season (e.g. entering missing scores into the system). There are the irregular/occasional needs such as for graphics. And some of the potential new features mentioned above would require a fair amount of “leg-work” (research, information collection/compilation, correspondence, etc.).

And finally, we know that for the website to grow and reach its potential, it cannot remain a two-person operation. If there are others out there with the same passion, energy, time and long-term commitment that enabled Jim and I to build up the website, who are interested in helping to manage the site going forward, we welcome your inquiries as well. Send us an e-mail.

Closing

Thank you for indulging me. We try to keep the focus on the student-athletes, coaches and teams, but felt it worthwhile to briefly turn the focus on the website itself. We genuinely appreciate all the feedback we get, positive and negative, and want all visitors to the site to feel free to send us your comments, complaints, suggestions, corrections and compliments.

It's been an exciting season thus far with traditional powers stumbling and struggling while new and/or unexpected faces have had a successful opening month. We hope the content and resources our site provides makes D3soccer.com an integral part of your following of Division III soccer.

Comments or feedback for the author? E-mail Christan Shirk.