By Joseph Knoop
A Mt. Vernon High School athletics website has been named one of the highest-ranking out of 900 sites hosted by Varsity News Network.
MaruadersAthletics.com ranked 40th nationwide with 20,420 page views for the month of April. The site also ranked 7th in the state of Indiana, beating schools such as Westfield, North Central and Bloomington North High School, as well as all county and Hoosier Heritage Conference Varsity News Network sites.
MaruadersAthletics.com tracks Mt. Vernon’s high school and middle school athletics teams, integrating with Varsity News Network for automatic updates on schedules, game results and school resources for applying students.
One primary benefit of a high ranking is additional sponsorship funding, said Maria Bond, communications director for Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation.
“It will become a fundraiser for the athletic subsidy program, which helps students afford the pay-to-play fees,” Bond said. “We’re working on promoting it into the community and letting them know the impact they’ve made by viewing it and using it as a resource. By viewing pages they are in turn helping the student athletes.”
Initial funds will be allocated to pay off the cost of developing the website, then transitioning into student financial assistance.
“When we talked about moving to (Varsity News Network), that was our hope,” Athletic Director Greg Roach said. “Not just to get info to people in an easier fashion but also raise more money for our school, so it’s very satisfying to know where our numbers are and that we’re ranked so highly.”
Roach believes many students can benefit from the increased funding.
“Several of our athletes fall under those categories and definitely get help with their pay-to-participate fees,” Roach said. “We started participation fees four years ago and we had the subsidies in place, but it was a struggle at times to find sponsorships and things like that to be able to fund it the way we wanted to.”
Other changes will be heading to Mt. Vernon’s athletics program in the coming months, including a new athletics director on August 1.
For more information, visit MaraudersAthletics.com.
