Category Archives: General

Welcome to our new home!

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New lookI’m about to let you in on a little secret. We here at D3sports.com have never been designers.

Our sites have never had the most modern look and they’ve never been the most well-organized, to say the least. Our layout was cluttered from the moment D3football.com launched in July 1999.

We’ve known that for some time, and for about three years now, a grand redesign had been talked about, sketched, but never quite achieved as we tried to get the entire D3sports.com network on the same page, so that we could then turn that page together. Rather than continue to fight this battle with a staff of exactly zero full-time employees, we decided to hire out.

And that’s where PrestoSports came in. They’re already the trusted home of athletics web sites at all levels, from Butler and Kent State down to high schools, with hundreds of Division III clients and more joining the network every year. (We see you there, Centennial Conference, Simpson, Swarthmore, Wooster.) We’ve already run our game day data through them for years and now their site design is on par with the rest of the Division III market.

We wanted in. And here we are, with the first of five site rollouts to come over the next few months. D3soccer.com, D3hoops.com and D3baseball.com will also get a similar makeover. D3sports.com will turn from being a placeholder site with one story and a bunch of links into a place where can also give some coverage to sports such as lacrosse, track, softball, cross country and other sports not dominated by UW-Whitewater or Mount Union.

I hope you will find everything you expect on our new site. Some of the archives are not yet brought over, but that process will continue. When I met with Presto this spring to discuss design, I told them the only thing we needed to keep was the logo, that which you see at the top of this page. From a look and feel perspective, nothing else was sacred.

And this is what we have, finally, a modern news site worthy of the fine student-athletes and great sport that we cover.

If you have questions, please drop us an email at info@d3sports.com or use our feedback form. Or since this is our blog, you can comment here at the bottom of the page.

ATN Podcast: Couple upsets

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There were a couple of upsets on Saturday, one practically unthinkable — yes, Grinnell, that’s you guys! — but the big winners of the first two weekends of Division III football were us, the fans.

Yes, that’s because we’ve been treated to a bunch of great early-season games, probably because few teams are willing to schedule the powers in the WIAC, NWC and ASC, so they are forced to play each other. Just look at the slate played by WIAC teams this past weekend for evidence.

Pat Coleman got to see the season opener for Mount Union, while Keith McMillan saw a D-III rivalry game more like Army-Navy than anything in Division III. They discuss those things and more in the Around the Nation Podcast.

Click the play button below to listen.

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You can load the podcast page in iTunes or can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Game Day: An early look at purple

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The state of Division III football is that Mount Union is forever December-relevant. But in September? Usually we can just presume that the Purple Raiders will get through the regular season unbeaten. (They’ve only lost one regular-season game in the history of D3football.com, after all.)

Now UW-Whitewater has joined Mount Union in that echelon, we’re going to devote a little extra time to covering the two purple powerhouses. When our new site launches, you’ll see that on game day. But in the interim, heck, Mount Union is playing a game just five hours from one of our gurus. Shouldn’t we be there?

So when Neil Seaman makes his first start for the Purple Raiders on Saturday, and they debut a former Kent State regular at defensive tackle and another transfer at corner, sure, we want to be there to see what it looks like.

Great games in the Keystone State (that’s Pennsylvania, for those of you who haven’t seen the license plates) and out West, plus many places in between. Pat Coleman is at the Mount Union/UW-Oshkosh game. Keith McMillan is at Coast Guard/Merchant Marine (after taking in the Western Connecticut/SUNY-Maritime game Friday night), Gordon Mann is at Delaware Valley/Washington and Jefferson and Ryan Tipps is at North Carolina Wesleyan/Hampden-Sydney.

Join the conversation!