Dyestat.com was an extremely popular track and field website created in the late 90's. Focusing on high school track and field and cross country, the site became a national and international resource for runners, coaches and fans all over the United States with an international audience as well. With it's conversion to ESPN/RISE, former members have been split over using the new format or finding alternative resources, including the newly created TrackTalk.
History of Dyestat
Founded in 1998 by John Dye, Dyestat was considered “The Internet Home of High School Track and Field” until it was sold to ESPN/RISE in June of 2010. Originally designed in 1995, the site was aimed at the high school and cross country scenes in Maryland to provide results and rankings.
Over the following 10 years, Dyestat grew in visibility and membership, with sponsorship help from Nike and Rivals.com. Editors, contributors and features were added and the site expanded it’s coverage to include the entire American high school track and field/cross country scene. Membership was 26,875 as of June, 2010.
By far the most popular feature of Dyestat was the interactive message board forums, which covered not only high school, but college and professional topics in the sport as well. Coaches, athletes and fans were able to discuss results, training, and products; often providing and receiving first hand information well before they became publicized in the mainstream media.
ESPN Acquisition of Dyestat
In June, 2010, ESPN followed through with their 2008 purchase of Student Sports Inc and created ESPN/RISE, which included Dyestat as part of the acquisition. This created a huge controversy within the Dyestat community, as many members felt they had been “sold out” to a larger, commercially oriented corporation.
Specifically, members felt that the sport’s niche would be compromised as it was now lumped in with a variety of more popular sports such as football and basketball and would not receive the focus it had enjoyed as Dyestat. Additionally many questioned the expertise of ESPN/RISE in covering the sport; however ESPN/RISE retained many of the Dyestat editorial staff and reporters.
Creation of ESPN/RISE
When the beta version of the ESPN/RISE site was introduced, there was a backlash from Dyestat loyalists. Viewers complained about the lack of functionality of the site, especially regarding the popular forums feature. The former Dyestat forums used the vBulletin format which allowed for picture uploads, easy quotation and editing functions, and a more visually friendly interface.
ESPN/RISE provides no user statistics, so it is unknown how many members have actually signed up. However, the track and field forums of the site have shown to be the most popular of all the sport forums with 220 threads, far ahead of the second most used forum. ESPN/RISE completed its first major coverage with the 2010 World Junior Championships held in Moncton, Canada. Coverage appeared to be extensive, with former Dyestat Senior Editor Steve Underwood providing daily updates.
The track and field main page also has links to the former Dyestat site for referencing archived results and features, including the old message boards.
Creation of TrackTalk
In response to ESPN/RISE, former Dyestat members created their own site, TrackTalk. The site is a bare bones version of the former Dyestat site, and in fact is patterned after the forums feature of Dyestat, which was also called Track Talk (space between “Track” and “Talk”). It uses the desired vBulletin format and allows the same functionality of the former message board. In the first month of its existence, 1,778 members initially signed up, with 1,581 threads currently created.
The new site currently has no staff for features, photography, covering events, reporting, or editing and relies on donations for funding. ESPN/RISE retained many of the Dyestat editorial staff and has the resources to provide coverage, while TrackTalk must rely on links to other sites provided by its members or inline posting of results on the message boards. There have also been questions about the moderation of the forums, particularly in the handling of trolling issues, which primarily was a result of insufficient staffing.
It is uncertain as to whether TrackTalk intends to expand into full coverage or remain a forums only website.
John Fleckles - John is a contributing writer and blogger who can research and create with the reader in mind. He's currently working with Static ...
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