After a few months, it finally dawned on us that people couldn’t search for videos on our Web site.

You see, only the most recent videos were viewable. Until now.

We’ve updated our video viewer. It now has more tabs so you find videos you might have missed — or videos that you want to see again. We have categories for football, volleyball, boys’ and girls’ basketball, and much, much more. Some schools, like Routt, have their own tabs (we may add tabs for other schools, as the volume of videos warrants).

The system isn’t perfect, yet. We still have a little tweaking to do (maybe more than tweaking; what’s between “tweak” and “complete overhaul” in computer lingo?), but we’ll get things sorted out soon.

So, if you want to see six great plays from the Jacksonville High School volleyball team’s last win of 2007, highlights from the Greenfield football team’s playoff game against Arcola, or Melissa Nichols’ game-winning shot against Greenfield, you can see all of it now, and forever. Just find the tab, and you’ll find the video.

I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed watching a little football in March.

Spring is a time for statistics.

Baseball is so dependent on numbers and tendencies and probabilities that it’s almost as if someone invented the statistical categories for the game before they invented the game itself. Softball, the same way.

Track and field? It’s all about beating the clock, or stretching the tape just a few inches further with each long jump or shot put throw.

Soccer? There have to be stats for soccer. We want your results online, too, Jacksonville.

If you like stats, spring sports were invented for you. Varsity was invented for you, too. We started the spring season with the Illinois College invitational track meet last Friday, and we’ve already started entering results online. We can’t wait for the first baseball or softball game (isn’t it still a bit cold?) so we can take a look at how Varsity handles those stats.

If you’re a coach, and you’d like to make sure your athletes are recognized on Varsity this spring, please give us a call. We have a user name and a password already set up for you, and we really could use your help. We know coaches are busy people, especially in season, so if you know of a parent who would like to help by entering stats, please let us know.

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.

Player of the Year is never an easy choice.

Many players had outstanding years this season. We felt one stood above the rest.

We’re always faced with the question: Should Player of the Year go to the highest scorer? The best rebounder? Should it go to the best player on the best team, or simply the best player?

Our staff has tended to make the Basketball Player of the Year (both boys’ and girls’) a postseason type of award. I think that makes sense. In few other sports do the state playoffs seem as important as they do in basketball. We don’t discount the regular season. Not at all. But everything in the playoffs — every decision, every shot — is magnified because if you don’t win, your season is over. The postseason is when you find out if a player has the right stuff.

Routt’s Melissa Nichols had a great season, but she had a truly memorable postseason, leading her team to the Final Four for the second straight year.

There’s something to be said for a player who helps guide her team through hard times. No team had more ups and downs this year than Routt, but somehow the team came together just in time for a strong postseason run. Melissa Nichols was a big part of that.

Nichols is really everything you’d ever want in a point guard. She is one of the most athletically gifted athletes in the area. She doesn’t like to talk about scoring, even after she’s had a big night. She sees her role as a distributor, and she’s a great one. Nichols led the area with an average of 5.5 assists per game. That means her passes led directly to an average of 11 points for her team every night she stepped on the court. That number would have been higher if Routt hadn’t gone through a horrific midseason shooting slump.

Melissa Nichols is an extraordinary ballhandler, and she’s a terrific defensive player — for some reason, that often seems to get overlooked in these discussions. Most importantly, she has great basketball smartness. She knew what had to be done and how to go about getting it done (even if things didn’t always work out).

All the elements of her game came together at the Virginia Sectional against Greenfield. If you must know, I fall into the “it wasn’t a lucky shot” camp. If “THE SHOT” had bounced off a referee’s head before swishing through the basket, it would have been a fluke shot, but it still wouldn’t have been a lucky shot. There is no such thing as luck. In basketball, you either make the shot or you don’t, and when it mattered most, Melissa Nichols made the shot.

It takes skill, guts, heart, dedication and years of practice to be able to summon up everything it takes to make a 27-foot jump shot to win a game the way she won that game. But there was so much more to “THE SHOT” than just the shot. Jessica Bowman had just hit a short jumper to put Greenfield ahead. Routt had no timeouts left — no time to talk to the players to help them regroup, no time to tell them that they still had a chance, no time to set up a play. This was on the players’ shoulders. It was on Melissa Nichols’ shoulders.

First Nichols had to get the ball downcourt. No problem. Then she saw teammate Morgan Eilering setting up a screen (it’s still a team game, you know). Then Nichols had to make a split-second decision. Does she try to dump the ball inside, or does she use the screen and shoot the ball herself?

She shot it. That was the right decision.

In fact, she made what turned out to be the right decision every step of the way on that play, which sent Routt to the next round of the playoffs and eventually to the state finals in Normal — an entire career summed up in 10 glorious seconds.

Nichols went on to have a great game against Brimfield in the super-sectionals. And although Routt didn’t win a game in Normal, the Lady Rockets played well in a field of four evenly matched teams.

I’m just glad I got to see most of it.

Congratulations to Melissa Nichols, our Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.

We just published our all-academic teams. It’s one of the most important things we do. After all, that’s why the kids are in school in the first place — academics. The athletics part is more entertaining to watch, however, so that’s why we cover basketball games and not math tests.

Here’s how we pick our all-academic team: we don’t. We ask for nominations from schools, which send us one male and one female each season. The students they send are automatically on the team. Schools in a co-op can send their own students. For example, we accept male and female athletes from Bluffs and Winchester, not just one male and one female for the West Central co-op.

If no one from your school appears on the list, that means the school didn’t submit anyone. That means either they had no one who met the criteria (3.5 GPA or above is required), or they just didn’t submit anyone. Different schools have their own processes for selecting nominees. Sometimes it’s the principal, sometimes it’s the athletic director and sometimes it’s a coach.

There are three criteria: Athletes must have a 3.5 GPA on a 4.0 scale; they must have participated in a sport during that particular season (we pick one for fall, one for winter and one for spring); and they must have participated in community and school activities in addition to sports.

That last one is kind of a big one. When we select a team captain (I usually select the captains after talking with other members of our staff), we usually give community and school activities more weight than grade point average. Good grades in themselves are commendable, but the students who volunteer for community activities have taken the extra step. They understand that education is important because it gives you a foundation for helping others in your community. Our all-academic team captains have figured that out already.

Athletics gets zero weight when we’re selecting our captains (you’ll note that stats are not among the criteria). As long as the students participated, we don’t care if they scored zero or 1,000 points. However, I’ve noticed that many times the best athletes are also the ones who are the most involved in their communities. And that’s great to see.

We’ve got some big changes on the way. First, let me tell you that all of this comes from California. We’re just one paper in a chain of newspapers owned by Freedom Communications. They’re handling all of our Web site stuff, and we’re glad they are. They give us the ability to make changes here and there, but for the big stuff, they’re in charge.

One change will be a redesign. The new Varsity Web site will look more like the myjournalcourier.com Web site. It will display links to more stories so they’re easier to find.

The other change, which is coming in a month or two, will affect everyone who posts comments on the site. Yep. We’ll begin requiring posters to register.

Oooh, scary. Not really. I think it will accomplish two things. First, it will create more of an online community on our site. As it is now, people can sign in as whomever they please. In fact, you can pick a different name for every comment you make. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the stories we’ve published had multiple posts by the same person, logged in under different names, talking to himself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

With the new system, you’ll still remain anonymous. But you’ll become known by your screen name. If you log in as “Mr. X” all the time, readers will get to know you through your posts. So message boards will become more of a conversation among people who “know” one another, or at least where each other is coming from, rather than hit-and-run posters commenting under different names. Currently, I know only one poster on our site, The Evaluator. I have no idea who it is, but when I see the name, I always know the comment will be thoughtful and insightful.

Second, the new system will make posters more responsible for their posts. Your freedom of expression won’t be abridged, but posters who continually violate the guidelines for posting can be banned from the site. The guidelines, of course, will remain extremely liberal. We want you to post comments; that’s one of the big reasons we have the site in the first place. We allow criticism of adults (as long as it’s not libelous); student-athletes, not so much.

One exciting thing about the new system is that readers will be able to start their own blogs. You’ll essentially have your own Web page. Here’s a link to the people who have created blogs on the Web site for the Colorado Springs Gazette, one of the other newspapers in our chain:

http://www.gazette.com/share/blogs/

You’ll be able to post your own blog and your own pictures. And we hope you do. We did, and it’s kinda fun.

OK, so being on camera is weird. I don’t know why it’s weird. It’s just weird. We did a little panel show called “The Big Show” when we first started this Web site. And it was odd to be on camera. It just makes you feel goofy somehow, at least for the first few times.

So it was amazing to me how well most of the student-athletes we interviewed on camera did with it. The first time through, yeah, we did get some giggles. But once they got used to it, they were like seasoned pros. I don’t know what kind of public speaking courses they’re teaching in these schools, but they’re working. I know I couldn’t have done it when I was in high school.

The kids were extremely polite, and to a person, gave thoughtful answers. We were never turned down for an interview — no, not even once. Many thanked us afterward for interviewing them. Honestly, I was impressed with every one of them.

For a student-athlete, one of the hardest things to do is talking to a reporter after a loss, but they handled that well, too. One interview I’ll never forget is the one we did with Greenfield’s Jessica Bowman after the Tigers lost a tough volleyball super-sectional match. Her voice was choked with emotion throughout the entire interview, but she answered all our questions, and helped us write a better story. And to do that on camera — wow. What a remarkable, gracious young woman.

You see, people don’t have to come on camera. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, but it doesn’t give us a license to require anyone to speak to us. We appreciate everyone who did.

OK, so I’m sitting here on a Thursday night and for the first time since last September there are no games to videotape.

It’s been a whole lot of fun to shoot these games, but it’s been a lot of work, too. Since January, I’ve been working 12- or 13-hour days to post videos by the next morning. I would come in at about 4 in the afternoon and leave at about 4 or 5 in the morning. I’m not sure if I’m bragging or complaining, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy doing it.

I love reading stories about the games, but there’s really nothing like being able to see a key play (or a blown call) for yourself. I hope you’ve enjoyed watching.

I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t received more videos from readers. By “more” I mean “any.” It’s not hard to post a video; you just pick your favorite play from a game, make a short video (20 seconds to a minute is plenty), and follow the instructions on the main page of our Web site.

Virtually every team we’ve covered this year had a student taping the game for the coach. I know coaches don’t have time to make videos during the season, but surely a student at the school would be happy to do it. We’re not looking for anyone to reveal all their best plays. Our goal is to recognize student-athletes for their hard work, and videos are one way to do that.

We can’t be everywhere every night, but it would be great to have at least one play from every game in our coverage area every night. The site is there for you.

Be the first to post a video. There’s still time to enter the Varsity Challenge (that’s $200 for your school’s athletic department for the most photos OR videos submitted in its behalf, and $200 for the best photo or video).

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.

The word “blog,” as you probably already know, is Internet shorthand for “Web log,” and most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty dull. They’re like online diaries, information that probably should have been written in a book and put in a box in the back of the closet and never seen by anybody.

It’s the kind of stuff you read on MySpace pages — mildly interesting if you’re friends with the person, but if you’re not, you really couldn’t care less.

Newspaper blogs are different — at least we hope they are. This one will mostly be about what we cover and why, which oddly enough, nobody seems to understand sometimes. More on that as we go along.

Personally (and everything you read here is “personally” — it’s an opinion; in fact, it’s my opinion), I’m excited about our new Web site. It gives us the ability to do things that newspapers aren’t supposed to be able to do. Suddenly, we’re a radio station, a television station and an online scrapbook, all in one. We can bring you news virtually as soon as we know about it. We can post audio and video from news events. And coming in just a little while, you yourself, dear reader, will be able to post photos that you take and video highlight clips that you produce yourself, just like YouTube.

And you can read all the thoughts I should have written in a book and put in a box in the back of the closet.