A good run!

It's pretty cool to see when a collegiate sports team does well how the community rallies behind them, especially in the case of a smaller school.

Quick disclaimer: I live in Minnesota, which I believe means I'm pre-disposed to be a huge hockey fan.

The Bemidji State University Beaver's run to the Frozen Four in the NCAA Men's Hockey tournament was incredible and super fun to watch. Once they upset Notre Dame I think the entire state of Minnesota rallied behind them. Suddenly in places that only vaguely knew about BSU were sporting "Beaver Fever" stuff all over the place. I've never seen that happen with the U of MN Gophers or the UND Sioux. Yes people get excited about them when they do well but it's not the little-kid-at-Christmas kind of excitement that I saw across the entire state with BSU's run to the finals. Even my dad called me earlier in the week to ask if I was going to make it a point to watch the game. (Unfortunately due to work and my commute I only caught the 3rd period...)

Anyway, I thought it was super cool, though a little heartbreaking when they lost last night to Miami Ohio. Don't get me wrong though, this Frozen Four has been super cool with all of these lesser known teams in and not the usual suspects. I think this was definitely a great year for college hockey!

And even though they didn't take the title, I think everyone in Minnesota who followed it was pretty excited about the game and the run to the semi finals. It's cool to see how much a collegiate team can bring together people from all over the place, even some who might normally cheer for another team.

I'm excited for the finals tomorrow...

January Thaw!

I know it's February now. However, that still doesn't stop me from being excited that it got into the double digit range above zero for two days in a row!

Did you go outside? I skied all weekend and it was great! (Minus a few face plants because some of the tracks were icy...)

That reminded me of some of the websites I've been exploring lately for college sports recruiting. Most of them charge a nominal fee (under $100) for high school athletes to upload videos of themselves playing their sport and then allow college athletic recruiters to access the sites to view the videos of potential students. Definitely an interesting concept, I thought, even if some of the videos I watched were so shaky they made me borderline ill to watch. :)

I wonder what percentage of top tier athletes are using these, and also what percentage of coaches and other recruiters are watching them. I also noticed that it only covered sports that are considered "major"; hockey was sparsely represented, any snow sports were completely left out and running only had a minor showing- usually of the track and field variety. (Then again, I can't imagine a coach sitting through a video of a 5-10k cross country race!)

Are you using any of these websites? If so, which ones? Have you been contacted by anyone from a college? Or, on the collegiate side... are you a coach using these? Do you know of a coach who uses these sites?

I'm eager to learn more about this... (partially as a coach myself, though there wasn't a place for XC skiing...)