School Sports Video Vote

Users can cast their votes for some of the plays of the year in high school American football thanks to an online video feature from a local newspaper.

New York state’s Times Herald-Record has a whole site dedicated to schools sports – Varsity 845 – and its football section recently launched the Smashmouth Awards.

Journalists created ten categories – such as Elusive Quarterbacks and Crunch Time -and then allowed users to vote on their favourites from the video footage.

The winners of each section were then put forward for the main prize and could be viewed by voters in a video package embedded from YouTube.

A spokesman for Ottaway Newspapers, the group behind the title, told E&P’s Fitz and Jen blog that the competition generated some 30,000 page views in the first week alone.

Varsity 845 features reports and information on a plethora of school sports teams and enables users to search for content relevant to them via searches by sport or school.



The Record Online also has a similar channel dedicated to college sports called Varsity 845 U, which offers coverage of teams in the area and reports on local youngsters playing for colleges elsewhere in the US.