ASC All-Access

We are now less than two weeks away from student-athletes arriving back on campus at ETBU, and as typically happens this time of year for me, the weariness of a long year of athletics back in May has given way to the freshness of a new year and the expectation of new opportunity.

I am excited about the upcoming year. The American Southwest Conference conducted its annual meeting of Sports Information Directors in Dallas yesterday and for me that usually serves as the time to tee things up in earnest for the upcoming year.

I like our football team as a dark horse in what will once again be a deep and talented league. As I've said before our volleyball team has generated as much excitement for the upcoming season as any of the 10 previous years I've been at ETBU. Both soccer teams will be improved with new faces and older returning ones. Men's basketball has built on a strong second half to last season and the hunger of barely missing the postseason with another strong recruiting class. Our women's basketball team will be one of the most improved in the entire conference -- you can count on that. Our softball team should once again be one of the best in the nation and they've gotten better with another strong recruiting class. And I expect bigger things still for our baseball team, which continues to load up in what is one of the toughest leagues in the nation bar none.

I also take it as a personal challenge to improve every year as an SID. Sometimes I get it done more than others, and sometimes, well, the improvement comes in smaller increments lets just say! But it is my goal every year to be better than the year before with the coverage of our teams and athletes.

Part of this improvement comes from our improved web site capabilities. We spent a lot of time discussing new media in this day and age and what our fans and followers use most to get their news. Obviously, the Internet is a big part of news today, no matter whether its sports, news, business, etc.

The ASC recognizes this and we are constantly working to improve our technology here at ETBU and throughout the conference. One addition to this year we discussed at the meeting was the unveiling of an "ASC All-Access" show that will debut in September on the conference website. This show will be about a 5-8 minute clip weekly highlighting news from around the league. There will be player/coach interviews, game highlights and other features highlighting conference schools and athletes.

We will post a link to the broadcast here on our ETBU website, and I would encourage you to check out the show on Wednesdays this fall. It's going to be a cool deal I think.

We are also going to be adding several things to our own site as well. Some of it you've already probably noticed, such as the Twitter addition. I would encourage you to sign up for this free service on Twitter and use it as another tool to keep up with our news. We will have more blogs from different sources as well, so just keep checking us out for the changes.

The countdown to 2009-2010 is officially underway...