Tuesday, March 3, 2009

One day late, sports web site goes live


Darn it! If you're going to set a deadline for something, and then go public with your plan as I did in an earlier post, it's nice to actually meet the deadline. Which I did not.

Even so, the new web site for Neighborhood Sports Chicago went live this morning, just one day behind schedule.

The site already includes a whole lot of information on how organizations are using sports for youth development and community development. In the next four weeks it will provide regular updates on preparations for the Spring Into Sports extravaganza from April 4 to 11. That's during the Chicago Public Schools spring break, and hundreds of kids each day are expected to participate in competitions, demonstrations and open swim at the four host venues: Crane Technical Prep High School, Englewood High School (not confirmed), Little Village Lawndale High School and Orr Academy High School.

This is the real thing when it comes to youth programming: very impressive work by the hosting organizations and partners. We hope the web site will bring attention to this work that engages youth while creating stronger individuals and stronger neighborhoods.

3 comments:

Mike Quinlan said...

looks good.

Mike Quinlan said...

What's the plan to drive the presumed target audience, local kids (14-18?) & their parents, to this website?

Patrick Barry said...

Good question, Mike. The target audience in the short term is actually program people who are running youth sports efforts and want to connect with others, or get info about Spring Into Sports because they are bringing their youth teams to participate in it.

Later, as we add more youth-created content (see category under Sports Beats), such as videos, audio clips, photography and stories by youth, we'll have something special to attract that group, and we'll start promoting to them via media that they use among themselves.