5th Anniversary!

Finally out of diapers as the website turns 5 today. Yeah, it took a little longer than most but thankfully it happened before the site had to enter kindergarten. Our fifth year brought a little normalcy back as we didn’t have to deal with a spring season and we actually got a championship.

As always, I request no presents but I do ask that you let your team’s parents, players and coaches about this little world. My hope is that they all respond that they are not idiots and already know about the site.

I have named the following section in the past as Self Gratification, and I see no reason to change that name as we look at the site’s statistics for the past year.

• There were 209 posts for the year (doesn’t include this one). That is the third most over the five years.

• I’ve added more than 220,000 words in the past year. That’s the most ever so I’m getting more long-winded, it seems. I don’t know why that would be. I think I try to stay on point and not just ramble for the sake of adding words to a post. I mean that wouldn’t benefit anyone. Hey! Has anyone seen the new Thor movie? I haven’t, yet. I did see Top Gun, which was quite fun. Anyway, the total words since the site’s inception is 862,800. Speaking of inception, that was a weird movie.

• The most popular post written this past year was Selection Eve (2021).

• The most popular page (left side menu) over the last year was 2022 Recruits.

• The most popular post all-time is actually What volleyball position is the hardest, which I wrote as kind of a joke because that was the most popular way new people found the site. The all-time most popular page is 2020 Recruits. Cancer Fight is 300 views behind it but I’m glad I didn’t have more content to push that over the top.

• Most page views for a month occurred during November 2021. This month actually broke the site’s record coming in with 25,938 views.

• For the year, in addition to November, October was also my highest view total ever for that month.

• Overall, there has been over 91,000 views on the website this past year. That is also a record.

• Most views for a day was November 8, 2021 with 2,339 views. That day I posted Selection Morning Musing, After the Carnage Musing and Final Regional Rankings. The record is still November 4, 2018 with 2,831 views.

• Outside of the USA, the site is most popular in Canada, Philippines and the United Kingdom (go CMS, I assume). I had heavy support from the Netherlands last year but that seems to have dropped off. Sad to see them go.

• The site now has 137 followers, which is 38 more than last year. Remember that you can follow through email or a WordPress account. I don’t use the emails or sell them in any way. (I’m actually kind of bad in trying to monetarize the site in any way.)

As far as the articles that I found the most fun to write, I’d have to say the Case Studies, which examine multiple teams and why they got an at-large bid and why others didn’t. Allows me to be snarky while looking at statistics. I really didn’t do many in depth articles as I’ve done in the past. No interviews or special stories. I need to get back to that.

Alright! I really feel that this article kicks off the new volleyball season and we really have just over 30 days until it starts. I’m looking forward to meeting coaches and parents I only know through email and watching as many matches as I can. Who knows, maybe this year my wife will let me sit with others again.