National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Jan 11, 2010 9:54:54 AM

The popularity of Division II's community-engagement and game-environment Web sites over the past two years is resulting a single site set that will debut this week.

The new site is designed to provide a one-stop shop for Division II members looking for ideas that work and resources that help institutions implement effective community engagement and provide family-friendly environments at their athletics contests.

The site will feature the latest news headlines with links to the full stories and newly released videos in what is becoming a vast library of viewable resources.

"The Division II site is a landing place for members to gather for the many online resources the division offers that pertain to the strategic-positioning platform," said Jill Willson, former athletics director at Texas A&M-Kingsville who now serves as a consultant for Division II and oversees the site.

Willson began administering the community-engagement site after the 2007 Convention. That is when Division II adopted legislation that promoted more campus-community involvement in accordance with the strategic-positioning platform that emphasized community outreach as an important characteristic of Division II schools.

Initially, the site was popular for its "ideas that work" section, where athletics personnel could sample what worked at other institutions and then modify those ideas for their own campuses. When the game-environment effort began a year later, a separate Web site was created as a toggle from the community-engagement site.

As more resources in both initiatives were developed, it became clear that the membership needed a single online source.

"We started with community engagement, wanting to give the membership an opportunity to share ideas that worked on their campuses," Willson said. "But then we added teachable moments to the game-environment site and have added videos for community-engagement events.

"The success of both pages is primarily because we've continued to add resources and not left either one of them static."

Increased traffic has been the result. In February 2008, the community-engagement Web site attracted about 6,000 visitors that month. But more than 20,000 visitors came to the site in November 2009, pushing the total hits for the history of the site past 6 million.

The new Division II site also may house a gathering place for Student-Athlete Advisory Committee members. Plans are still under way for that addition.

"Not only does Division II emphasize and believe in its commitment to community, our membership has become a vibrant community in and of itself," said Division II Vice President Mike Racy. "It's important for that community to have an online hub where members can gather the resources they need to live the division's strategic position."

Willson will lead an educational session Friday at the NCAA Convention to explain the changes.

"Part of the need to change is simply to make the navigation easier," she said. "We want people to find exactly what they are looking for. But the increased inventory also drives the need to reorganize.

"After all, ‘resourcefulness' is one of the division's six attributes. We're finding that Division II members are if nothing else resourceful – and that's why the division tends to be so good at implementing its strategic initiatives."