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Team's Web site gets nods

Brandon's basketball team is on display and in good shape - on the Internet.

By GREG AUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2000

Mark Hermann took Brandon's boys basketball team to the state semifinals last year, but then again, 24 coaches in six classes can boast such a feat.

Hermann belongs to a far more elite fraternity, off the hardcourt in another fast-paced environment in which his team also is a front-runner. The Eagles have a Web site -- http://brandonhoops.com -- that makes some college sites look like mom'n'pop operations.

It's not just a page on the school's site, but a domain of its own, easy to remember, whether you're a fan, a parent or a college recruiter. More and more high school teams are using the Internet, and more people are taking time to check them out.

"Every month, it amazes me," Hermann said of the site's popularity, boasting more than 5,500 hits in the past year despite little publicity outside the team's locker room. "I really don't know who the people are that are visiting our site."

Hermann scoured the Internet last year, checking out what few other high school team sites he could find, noting the strengths of each and making a blueprint for his own site.

"I was only able to find seven or eight high school sites, but what I tried to do was outdo all of them," said Hermann, whose site now boasts pictures, statistics and even college entrance exam scores for each player. Hermann, who admits he isn't especially computer-literate, found a student in the school's computer lab and pays him to run the site.

In the off-season, he has gotten nearly as many calls about his site as about his team. When college coaches have questions about a player, he's found that most can be answered on the Web page, which is updated regularly during the season with the latest results and statistics.

"I just tell them to dial up our site, that it's got all the information they need," he said.

The online bug is spreading. Coaches use the Internet not only to boost their team, but to get coaching tips, look for new plays, find hints on how to deal with parents and even scout opponents.

Brandon assistant volleyball coach Mike Flynn picked Hermann's brain before building a home page.

"You're crazy if you don't have it as part of your program," Hermann told him. "It can do so much for you."

To save money, Flynn launched his page at eteamz.com, a sports community site that allows any team to build its own site for free -- with more than 119,000 teams linked up.

Flynn said the site is great for players and parents, but said the Internet has helped him most in terms of communication.

"Sending out one e-mail to everyone is so much easier than getting the old phone tree going," said Flynn, whose page had a notice Monday announcing a late change in the team's schedule.

Flynn is also a coach with the Club Tampa volleyball program -- if you plug "Tampa" and "volleyball" into search engines, www.clubtampa.com is one of the first sites found. He recently received an e-mail from a volleyball player in Cameroon who wrote, "I urge to play on your team," mistaking the youth team for a professional team.

"Parents can hop on the Internet if they're moving to the area and want their daughter to play volleyball in Tampa," Flynn said.

Many of the larger sites offer more than just exposure for young coaches -- there are helpful hints (many shared from other coaches) to help make teams look as good on the field as they do online.

Eteamz.com, which boasts more than 15-million page impressions per month, was created two years ago by a 26-year-old UCLA grad who was looking for help as he coached his nephew's softball team. The idea behind the site was strong enough that Steve Wynne, former president and CEO of adidas America, signed on as the company's chairman.

"We've made a real commitment to grass-roots sports," Wynne said. "I'm a strong believer in that, in something that gives coaches the ability to get help, to link up with their peers."

One of the site's more popular features allows coaches to e-mail questions to the site's panel of experts. Selected answers are posted each week, covering a range of topics.

"They're asking everything from "How do I deal with a kid whose father has died?' to "Do you have any good bunt drills?'T" Wynne said.

Among those experts is Dr. Tom Crawford, a former coaching director at the U.S. Olympic Committee, who said his new job is more gratifying because it allows him to work with more coaches.

"I was working with the best coaches in the country, but there wasn't the reach to the number of people we wanted. This is perfect for that," said Crawford, who also writes a weekly column for the site. "You're instantly reaching out to literally thousands of coaches. The audience is hungry for information. You put stuff out there, and people are responding to it that day. It's one of the most refreshing parts of this job. It lets you know people are applying the things we're putting out there."

Flynn has found the Internet handy as an open forum for exchanging ideas, especially finding new drills to pass along to his players.

"Serving is a pretty basic skill, and the girls on a club team have seen these drills for years and gone through them hundreds of times, so it's hard to keep them focused and attentive," said Flynn, who found new ideas on how to keep his players interested in improving their serves.

The secrecy once associated with playbooks and drills is nowhere to be found online. Eteamz.com has extensive libraries of plays that coaches have shared.

There are X's and O's straight off a locker-room chalkboard, with detailed explanations for running fake punts, and animated graphics to show the motion in a flex offense in basketball.

John Burns, a coach with the Northeast Bandits youth football team in St. Petersburg, has a page for his Flyweights team, complete with a roster and results updated after each Saturday's game. Burns said he's used the Internet to find new plays -- even if he doesn't use them himself, he'll recognize them more quickly when opponents do.

"The big thing right now is the Wing-T offense -- every book, every site seems to have something on it," Burns said.

"Even if I may not be particular to that, I know I see a lot of it, so I want to know as much about it as I can."

Bloomingdale's boys soccer team has won three state titles since 1993, and assistant coach Bob Woodard has found the Internet to be an invaluable resource in keeping the success going. It has helped him find new techniques -- last year he found a site that showed him a formation used by British soccer team Arsenal in the 1930s -- but has also been a big help in scouting.

"You'd be amazed how much stuff you can find," he said. "Some teams' sites will tell you who their stars are. They'll actually say, "This is our No. 1 scorer, this is our No. 2 scorer, this is our top defender.' So we know exactly who we need to keep an eye on."

With that kind of espionage lurking in seemingly innocent soccer schedules, Woodard said he won't post individual statistics on his site during the season. As soon as the season's over, he'll get them up there, to help his players land spots on college teams.

Hermann, too, is already looking to upgrade his site for next season, knowing that what was ahead of the pace last year will be woefully lacking before long. The Internet is changing faster than any other aspect of coaching, and Hermann is reluctantly accepting that sites like his will only inspire his opponents to counter with sites of their own.

"I'm kind of hoping they don't," Hermann said. "Right now, this makes our program stand out. It's beyond what I ever thought it would be."

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