NCPrepSports.net
Cumberland County Schools' High School Athletic Web Site

 

Web site provides Cumberland stats

by Chris Koonce
The Sandspur Correspondent
January 17. 2007

Just the stats

  • This week: Mike Molin provides a fix for a statistics junkie like me.

    I have a confession to make. I’m addicted to statistics. In fact, one of my favorite Christmas presents was the 2007 Almanac published by Baseball America. The book contains 447 pages of statistics on every major and minor league baseball player. Hope Mills native Blake Maxwell is right there on page 73.

    I guess my confession is not a surprise to anyone who has read any of my articles over the last seven months. You can imagine how much time I spend on the Internet looking at sports statistics. One of my favorite places to visit is ncprepsports.net. This is the Web site for high school sports for Cumberland County schools and was created by Mike Molin, a county resident since 1972.

    Molin played freshman baseball at West Virginia after competing in football and basketball in high school. Today he is an avid golfer as a member of Gates Four Country Club, where he lives with his wife, Patti. They have two daughters, Nicole, a lawyer in Wilmington, and Jodie, a teacher at Gray’s Creek Middle School.

    Molin began recording statistics at South View in 1996 and helped compile the school’s record books for football and basketball. Soon, his work began to be noticed by others in the county.

    “In 2001, Fred McDaniel, director of student activities for Cumberland County Schools, asked me to compile all the boys and girls basketball stats for all the county schools,” Molin said. “So I worked with the coaches. They sent me their stats. I compiled and faxed back to them each week. I would also send them to The Fayetteville Observer.”

    Molin, a 30-year employee of IBM, began to think about expanding his contributions to the local sports scene.

    “I thought to myself that there were many other high school sports fans in the area who would like to see not only these stats but other information like schedules, archived news articles, all-conference teams, college commitments, athletes of the week — not only for the major sports like football, basketball, but for volleyball, soccer, wrestling, baseball, softball, golf, tennis, track etc.,” Molin said. “At that time the Internet was kind of a mystery to me, so in the spring of 2001, I enlisted an IBM associate of mine who was a little more technical than me and we set up the site using AIT as the host.

    “Initially, I sold ads on the site, but when it became apparent that the ads were taking up too much space, I cancelled all my agreements and went to Dr. David Jackson and Fred McDaniel with Cumberland County Schools, and we worked out a contractor’s agreement where I would provide the site for the school district.

    “This has worked out great. Although I still own the ncprepsports.net domain, the district’s athletic directors are the real owners. I attend their monthly meeting and brief them on what I am doing with the site.”

    The site has fared well, competing for attention in the vast world of cyberspace.

    “On August 1, I reset the counter to see how many hits we would get to the site for this school year,” Molin said. “At the end of December, we were averaging over 22,000 hits per month. I guess that is pretty good, since we do not publicize outside the county and there is nothing to compare it to. I do get very positive e-mails from people outside the county wishing their district had such a site.

    “Also, I ask the athletic directors and coaches to help push the site noting that we are just trying to get area sports fans interested in their athletic programs and to help fill their seats at their sporting events.”

    The cooperation with the schools is the lifeblood of the site. It would be impossible for an individual to maintain the records of all the local schools without considerable assistance.

    “Most of the coaches are very good about sending in accurate statistical information on a timely basis,” Molin said. “The stat information cannot be posted without their input, so I am very appreciative of the time the coaches and members of their staff take to keep the stat information and send in to me.”

    With 10 high schools each sending him statistics on 16 different teams, it takes a lot of effort to update the site daily.

    “It’s very labor intensive,’’ he said. “Every morning there is usually something new to add to the site whether it be the prior day’s scores, updating conference standings, links to news articles. I get stats that are sent in that day posted by that evening. When I travel, I take my laptop with me and do updates on the road.”

    Even with the amount of attention required, Molin still enjoys spending his spare time working on the site and said his favorite part is, “finding new and updated information that I can post.”

    “Last week for example, I found information on the winningest active coaches on the N.C. iHigh site, so links were put in to that.” Molin said. “A great time is waiting on that Saturday when the football playoff pairings are announced from the NCHSAA. I compare it to the NCAA basketball pairings Sunday. The great thing about the Internet is that you can get the information out there where the public can see it immediately.”

    Of course, upon hearing Molin talk about the new information on the winningest coaches, I decided to immediately check out the link mentioned above. My craving for information was satisfied when I read the listing for winningest active softball coaches. The top spot is occupied by our very own Eddie Dees. Yeah, that’s right Mayor Dees won 522 games in his 24 years as the softball coach at South View.

    See, stats can be fun. I don’t know if there is a cure for my addiction. I hope I never find one.

    Chris Koonce is a local sports enthusiast. He can be found at sporting events throughout the South Cumberland County region rooting for the young athletes.

 

 

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