Successful stand-alone websites covering just prep sports

Does anybody knows of a successful stand-alone website, or a couple of successful websites, that solely cover prep sports and aren't affiliated with a newspaper?

An example in Chicago is CSLInsider.com, which covers the Central Suburban League in the Northern suburbs. Are there any other examples people know of around the country like that site, where they're able to use freelancers and survive because of ad revenue or something else?

 

JJhuddle.com

 

It's only football, but its pretty comprehensive in the Stockton-Modesto-Merced, CA, area: www.blackhatfootball.com

 

Maxpreps.com doesn't really do much in terms of generating news, but it's a GREAT resource for stuff like rosters, schedules and stats (though teams are responsible for submitting those themselves, so it's hit-or-miss sometimes).

 

calhisports.com, sanfranpreps.com, norcalpreps.com

 

Here in Kansas, we use www.kpreps.com and www.catchitkansas.com quite a bit.

 

A couple friends of mine started scrimmageplay.com in the Charlottesville, VA area. They do have a print magazine, though.

 

This is interesting...we had a well-established one oregonprepsports.net that was a goto site for a good 4-5 years out here, but then the state organization (nonprofit) added rankings to its official playoff format and vastly improved its website with standings, results, etc, overtaking the other site easily.

 

Depends on what you mean by "successful." You can launch a preps website in almost any market and achieve success from an editorial and audience standpoint. But creating a financial success will be more challenging. So if you're considering this idea, I'd say go for it as a passion/hobby -- but not to make a living.

 

I forget the name of the NYC one that eventually was bought by the New York Post, but that one was pretty good.

 

We had one in our area that came on like gangbusters and did a pretty decent job for a year or so. They did some nice game coverage and features, but didn't have the depth of coverage that our newspaper site did. Then the guy who did the bulk of the writing either left or got discouraged or something, and the site hasn't been updated for one entire school year and the football season for this year.

 

The Ruden Report.com does a great job covering Fairfield County Ct prep sports. Started
this year by Dave Ruden who covered prep sports up until this year for Stamford Advocate.

Ruden created multi media site that does a much better job than paper ever did. From what I understand he has already sold enough sponsorships to fund it.

Ruden is well known and respected so he has gotten great cooperation from the
Fairfield County football coaches.