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Follow Paul on Twitter: @IdahoSportsPaul
With state tournaments right around the corner, I thought I'd give everyone a little overview of how things are going to work this year. I went over this before state football, but basketball brings a new set of fans, parents and families to the web site so one more explanation is probably in order.
IdahoSports.com no longer holds the exclusive Internet video streaming rights to Idaho's high school state tournaments. After a decade of providing Idaho with free video web casts of state tournament games all over Idaho, last spring the IHSAA Board of Directors voted to award these rights to a national company that requires viewers to pay to watch.
IdahoSports.com will continue to provide live (and free) video web casts of regular season and district tournament events. For at least the next 5 years, however, IdahoSports.com will only be providing audio-only web casts of all 132 boys and girls state basketball tournament games. These audio web casts will continue to be available free of charge to listen to live and in the GameStreams archives.
Covering high school sports for you, the fans, is something we take very seriously here at IdahoSports.com. Maybe 'seriously' isn't the right word because we have way too much fun doing what we do to have time to be serious. Whatever it is though, we've been doing it a long time - since 1997. Most of the kids playing in these tournaments have never lived in a world without IdahoSports.com.
The team here at IdahoSports.com is a pretty mixed bunch, which helps us give you better coverage. We have former band geeks, state champions, current teachers, retired teachers, soccer moms, wrestling dads, varsity coaches, school paper editors - we even have one and a half Canadians.
This group of misfits and high school sports junkies somehow come together to create the best state tournament coverage in Idaho year in and year out.
Here's what we are doing this year:
1. Live Tournament Audio-Broadcasts - All 132 state girls and boys basketball games will be audio-broadcast to the world on IdahoSports.com - LIVE and FREE.
2. Action Photographers - We have the BEST action photographers posting galleries on IdahoSports.com! If you have never checked out their work, you owe it to yourself to look at what these 'masters of the camera' do week in and week out. As of this writing, every single boys state basketball game will be covered by our team of action photographers. Our photographers do this on their own dime and only make money when people buy prints from them - they keep 100% of everything they sell. Hint hint.
Keep an eye on the Action Photo Galleries over the next few weeks.
3. Social Media - Over 9,400 of you have 'liked' us on Facebook, over 7,200 of you follow us on Twitter and our new Instagram account is picking up steam with over 1,200 followers. If you haven't done it yet, take the time to follow us now.
Follow us on Twitter @IdahoSports, on Facebook.com/IdahoSports and Instagram.com/IdahoSports so you won't miss anything. We are also going to have special contests and give-a-ways available only to our social media followers.
4. Daily Recaps, Blogs and Previews - For some reason you all really like our state tournament previews and predictions. We got lots of comments last year and we have been getting emails already this year asking when they are coming out. Well, we are all a bunch of people-pleasers so we will be doing it again.
The first round of the girls tournament previews will come out Wednesday February 15th. Every morning of the tournament come back to see who we think will be moving on and why.
5. Brackets & Results -The most important thing fans want to know, if they can't be there in person, is who won the game! We will be updating brackets and scores immediately after every game so you won't have to wait to know if your team won. We will also be updating the web site every night with the next day's game schedules and broadcast schedules.
Of course, the best place to be during the winter state tournaments is AT the games. Support your local schools, teams and athletes by being there in person. If you just can't be there, IdahoSports.com has you covered.
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