Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Nearing the midpoint of July. A couple of miscellaneous notes.

Boys baseball substates are being played this week. In 2A it will be a rematch of the 2002 substate baseball game won by Unity over Okoboji when Unity used a squeeze bunt to push ahead for the win under head coach and Dordt grad Marlin Schoonhoven. Teams will play in Sheldon at Orab Field on Tuesday night at 7:00. Of note for the Knights is the season Travis Dekkers is having. Dekkers, you may remember, signed on with Dordt this winter. Started the season slow–batted around .200 for the first two weeks or so and since has caught fire. Is well above .300 now and has eight homeruns and over 40 rbi and has had a hand in nine of Unity’s 21 wins on the mound–six by way of wins and three by save. Also of note, the last (and only) time Unity went to state in baseball was with Jeff Schouten–Dordt’s current head coach, on the bench in an assistants capacity.

Also on the Unity team are Brice Kroeze and James Rowenhorst although Rowenhorst is currently unavailable due to a service project in Mexico that he is on. Both Kroeze and Rowenhorst will be reporting for Dordt football camp in mid-August.

State baseball begins this weekend, July 18 in Des Moines at Sec Taylor, I mean, Principal Park–home of the Iowa Cubs.

I’m currently wrapping up work on ad sales for the athletic print programs for football, basketball, etc……think I’ve got almost everything complete.

One final note, am looking for a spotter or two to work in the football press box this fall for help with stats and another set of eyes for the public address announcer. Interested? let me know mbyker@dordt.edu

Finally, an astute reader pointed out another factor in the number of hits our website received back in March of 2006—hired our first football coach, John Heavner. That surely drove up traffic as well. I’m still looking for those back to back 40,000 hit months…….

Every month I get reports from our webmaster, Brady Fopma, regarding the number of hits and page views the athletic website gets over the course of a month. Not only do I get the monthly report but the I also receive a historical report dating back to October of 2000.

Anytime I wonder if anyone is using the information the sports information office puts up I just need to look at the numbers to realize that yes, friends, and even some foes I would imagine, are visiting this website. Here are some numbers just for your information.

In May of 2008 the athletics site got 28,643 user sessions and 117,495 total hits. Our high water mark in user sessions is 40,255 in March of 2006. What, you may ask, happened then? Easy answer. Men’s basketball qualified for the national tournament. That month was also the first month we broke 100,000 hits in a single month.

I also like to look at the trends–how each month measured against the same month one year ago and two years ago. Invariably, the numbers keep climbing. We first broke 10,000 user sessions in February 2003. 20,0000 user sessions in September 2005 and we cleared back to back 30,000 months in November and December of 2006. The highest number of hits in a single month? 165,681 in October 2007. The next landmarks I’m looking for are back to back 40,000 user session months and 200,000 hits in a month. Maybe this school year will be the year.

Lastly, on this subject, since October 2000 we’ve received1,495,645 user sessions with 5,362,040 hits. Thanks for visiting!!!

A couple football recruits have trickled in over the last couple weeks. I can’t imagine there will be many more, but I’ve found out you never can tell.

Have run into several athletes this summer either working on grounds at Dordt College or in the area. All are working out regularly in the weight room to get stronger and several basketball players are playing at open gym. Have seen Logan Kingma, Michael Eekhoff, Eric Miedema, Seth Denton and Jake Dykstra just to name a few. Women’s basketball suffered a blow when Erin Savery re-injured the ACL she tore against Northwestern back in November of 2007. She had surgery to repair it again and she probably won’t be available for the 2008-2009 season.

From the “it’s a small world” department……………Kirk Niewenhuis, a high school baseball teammate of Dillon Peters at Denver Christian was drafted 100th overall by the New York Mets after his junior season at Azusa Pacific. Signed a contract and received a $360,000bonus. He was the first NAIA player taken in the June draft. Coach Jeff Schouten spent a fair amount of time trying to convince Niewenhuis to go east instead of west…..didn’t work out. Lousiana State University also has DJLeMahieu on their roster….son of Tom LeMahieu who attended and graduated from Dordt College. DJ was a two-time winner of the player of the year award in Michigan. Batted .337 in 68 games played as a freshman for a team that advanced to the College World Series in Omaha.

Now, where’s that sun screen………