By Alison Colman

November 2009

Now when visitors to Elmhurst College’s website click on the Athletics section they will find an updated page with a graphically different look than the rest of the college’s website.

“The new website has a lot of new features that weren’t really possibly with our old design,” said Kevin Juday, Sports Information Director at EC in an e-mail interview. “The website lets us include photos in our stories, and has rotating stories on the home page, so there is not always just one story at the top of the page.”

The new design took about five months to come together from start to finish.

“From the time we first agreed to do the site, we started looking at some other school’s sites,” said Juday. “After that came the design phase, and once we had agreed on the overall look of the site, we started inputting all of our content. We went through a few rounds of revisions and updates before we felt the site was ready to be launched.”

Juday had many people involved in the creation of the website. EC senior Samantha Burmeister, junior Liz McAllister and Marcel Maas who is a graphic designer in EC’s Communications and Public Affairs department all played a part in the process.

“I’ve been working on it at least twice a week since I’ve been at school this year,” said McAllister. “[I’ve] updated rosters and schedules, and posted the stories from the old website.”

Since the website is seen not only by current fans, but recruits or potential athletes interested in becoming a Bluejay, it was important that the information remain appealing and competitive with other schools in the conference.

“I definitely feel that our site matches or exceeds what some of our closest conference competitors have to offer,” said Juday. “I know that a lot of prospective student-athletes follow schools they’re interested in attending through the web…also [it’s] an easy way for parents of student-athletes to follow their teams, especially if they live out of the area.”

McAllister thinks that some of the new features will attract more students and get fans more involved with Bluejay athletics.

“Some of the things that I thought were neat were the videos that are on most of the sports’ own pages and the Bluejay Spotlight which makes it more known when one of the athletes receives one of the CCIW awards,” said McAllister.

Something that is becoming more and more popular in the professional sports world is receiving text updates from your favorite Major League team moments after it happens. Now fans can get these same updates from the college’s website.

“One of the new features that we’re excited about is the ability to sign up for text message updates,” said Juday. “Fans can enter their cell phone numbers, and have scores of the teams that they’d like to follow sent right to their mobile device.”

With all of these new updates and features the new website aims to attract more student-athletes to at least come and check out Elmhurst College as a potential school.

“I definitely think so, there is an actual recruitment form on many of the pages, which is something that I’m pretty sure you had to print off on the old website,” said McAllister. “Also, it’s just a lot easier to navigate which I know is something I appreciated when looking for schools.”