You might remember me mentioning our Varsity All-Stars. These are the coaches who help us with the Varsity Web site.

Varsity was set up by our people in California so it would be easy to use. Not just for us, but for you, too.

It’s true: The program is very easy to use. However, it takes a lot of time to enter stats. If we had to enter stats for every single game every night, we’d never get done. We just don’t have the staff to do it.

We depend on coaches to help us. Many do. But these are no ordinary coaches. They’re coaches who are so enthusiastic about their sport, or their team, or who are so proud of their players, or who are so appreciative of their team’s fans, or who are just so happy to have the opportunity to coach and touch the lives of our young people that they’re willing to take the time to enter their stats online.

Those are our All-Stars.

It’s a simple stat program, and it’s kind of neat the way they put it together. If you enter stats for each game, the Web site will do the rest, adding together stats for each player game by game. You can compare stats in any number of ways. For basketball, for instance, you can click on points, and the site will rank the players by points. Click on steals, and it will rank the players by steals. But you probably already knew that.

As I said, there are some coaches who think this endeavor is worthwhile enough to help us. Routt football was among the best this year. Coaches entered stats for their games THE NIGHT OF the game. Triopia did, too. West Central always had their stats entered before the weekend was out. Pittsfield, too. And Pleasant Hill.

We had some great ones in basketball as well. Coach Todd Bradshaw made sure Griggsville-Perry’s stats were updated. Calhoun, Waverly, Brown County, Pleasant Hill, A-C Central, Rushville-Industry and even Westfair — they all helped. Others, like Jacksonville, at least furnished all their stats — steals, rebounds, assists and the other things that don’t show up in the nightly box scores.

Girls’ basketball teams helped, too. Waverly girls’ basketball coach Scott Hendricks was a Varsity All-Star. Pleasant Hill. Routt coach Joe Eilering, whose team went further in the playoffs than any other team in the area, filled in all of his team’s stats. Calhoun entered stats and uploaded mug shots of all their players. Absolutely outstanding. Carrollton. Greenfield. Triopia. Brown County. They all helped. Volleyball — Carrie Jo Donnan at A-C Central was a Varsity All-Star. Routt coach Pat Gibson entered his team’s stats. Triopia helped. I’m hoping I haven’t left anyone out. But if you’re a regular visitor to the site, you know which schools helped, and which did not.

So to our All-Stars, we say thank you. You should thank them, too, if you’re a fan who enjoyed seeing updated stats of your favorite players.

If your team’s stats weren’t online, or they weren’t complete, ask your coach why. Or better yet, volunteer to enter them for your team.

In a small way, you can touch the lives of our young people, too.

I got my first comment on my blog, which proves at least one person is reading it. So, I’ll be writing more.

Right now we’re covering a lot of Routt football — actually, a lot of football in general. Routt is widely regarded as the best team in the area, so there’s a lot of interest in the team.

That’s generally how we decide what to cover. There’s something to be said for hitting every school and every sport each season. I would love to be able to do that. But when resources are limited, we have to cover what we think most people will be interested in.

We pick football games based on how close we think the game will be; there’s nothing quite so boring to write about or to read about as a blowout. Sometimes, of course, we’re wrong. We also try to cover games that involve more than one local team simply because twice as many readers will be interested in the game.

One exception was New Berlin a couple of weeks ago. The Pretzels don’t play anybody we cover, but they’ve got a good team this year, and they’re off to a good start — again, good start = interest.

Another exception is the Alton Telegraph. That newspaper is owned by the same chain we are, so we share stories. When they cover games involving our local teams, we will publish the story — even games we probably wouldn’t have covered ourselves. Last week we were planning to cover Bunker Hill vs. Greenfield (two undefeated teams, at the time), but Alton volunteered to cover it, so that freed up one of our reporters to go to a different game.

Jacksonville always gets covered because it’s Jacksonville. About half our readership is in Jacksonville, so more people want to know about what happens to the Crimsons than almost any other team we cover — win or lose.

We are having a blast taking video of football and volleyball games (visit myjournalcouriervarsity.com). Right now, we’re sticking close to home for our videos because we have to lay out pages and take calls in addition to going out and shooting the games. If we were to drive down to Carrollton, there would be one less person in the office to take calls at the busiest time of night.

More later.