From Thursday October 5th's Charlotte Observer 

BUILDING A CYBER FAN BASE

A.L. Brown, other schools now have presence on Web

Internet sites give fans a place to go for team news, stats and history

JOE HABINA

Special Correspondent

When Lane Stribling set out to create a Web site dedicated to the Kannapolis A.L. Brown High School football team, he wasn't deterred by even the greatest challenge.

A lifetime Kannapolis resident, Stribling was unknowingly researching much of the future site's content during 40 years of attending nearly every Wonders game.

But there was one problem. He barely knew his way around a computer.

Like several other local residents who recently turned their prep football passion into an e-pastime, the techno-challenged Stribling labored through, and today he has one of the most comprehensive prep football Web sites in the area.

Kannapolisfootball.com is full of Kannapolis football history, updated statistics for this year's team and many other extras. (Also check out southrowanfootball.com, facseagles.com and the developing concordspiders.com.)

Library helped

Stribling, a retired mill worker, said he started researching material for the site about five years ago. By frequenting the history room at the Kannapolis branch of the Cabarrus County library, he uncovered newspaper articles and photographs from 80 years ago.Highlights of the Kannapolis football site include a couple of historical pages that chronicle the football team, the Kannapolis City Schools system and A.L. Brown's Memorial Stadium. Included are a couple of photographs from Kannapolis' first high school team in 1924.

Particularly appealing are the pages documenting every A.L. Brown season since 1952, the year that school opened. Coaches' names, team records, key players and a couple of paragraphs tell the story of each season.

Stats upon stats

The "For the Record" page includes tidbits on coaching records, records against certain opponents and Wonders' players who have represented the team in season-ending all-star games. And you probably won't find this many statistics for the Wonders' team and the other South Piedmont Conference teams in the same place anywhere else.

Stribling said he puts in as many as 15 to 20 hours a week updating the site. It costs him about $85 annually to run it.

"I love the fact that I can do this for all the players, coaches and fans that have been such a big part," he said. "It's the least I can do for all the great moments these teams have given us over such a long, long time.

"I hope to be around a long, long time and to continue to make this Web site the very best I can make it."

Runs site from a distance

Chris Hughes spends most of his time serving his country. He spends his spare time serving his high school alma mater.Hughes, a former South Rowan football player and assistant coach, produces southrowanfootball.com from more than 100 miles away. He is in the Army at Fort Bragg -- a sergeant working with a special operations medical team. Hughes travels back to Landis each fall Friday and, usually, one other time during the week to supervise the team's game-day video productions and to get material for the Web site.

A self-proclaimed sports-history nut, he said he started compiling information on South Rowan about the time he became an assistant coach in 1999.

On the day before official practice began last year, Hughes said, he spent about three hours getting it off the ground and within a few days had a full-fledged site.

With the help of newspaper files, Hughes researched the score from every South game since the school opened in 1961. Based on that information, he has Raiders' scores sorted by opponents, coaches and decades, each with its own page.

Because individual statistics were not as important to fans and readers decades ago, Hughes' "school records" reach only as far back as the mid-'70s, but they are pretty thorough. The site has inclusive offensive statistics for every South team since 1992.

"Parents can look at their child on there," first-year South Rowan coach Jason Rollins said. "The kids like it because they can see things on there like who the player of the week is. It helps us as a staff, because we can put things on there that the kids need to see."

Rollins has embraced the site and considers it one of the tools he can use to turn the football program around. The "Head Coach Corner" page allows Rollins to post Players of the Week and information on team workouts.

Hughes said the South Rowan booster club has approached him about producing an all-sports Web site. He said he already has sites in the works for the boys' basketball and baseball teams, but plans on turning the maintenance of them over to those sports' coaches.

Web idea is growing

First Assembly's site, facseagles.com, and Concord's concordspiders.com provide their teams' fans with basic information, such as roster and schedule, and game capsules written by the sites' respective administrators. Both sites have a collection of quality game-action photographs.

The Concord site is aiming to set a high standard, with pages under construction for a team history, season-by-season results, and individual records.

What type of impact has the Internet had on prep football teams? Hughes' southrowanfootball.com has had almost 35,000 hits in its 14 months.

That's about five times the combined population of Landis and China Grove, the two towns South Rowan High primarily serves.