Posted: Oct 14, 2011
Release courtesy of the Ashland University Sport Information Department
ASHLAND, Ohio – The Ashland University athletic department announced today (Oct. 14) the launch of a new athletics website, www.GoAshlandEagles.com, that will be the new official online home of Ashland’s 20 varsity sports.
The website – hosted and built by PrestoSports in tandem
with the AU athletic department – will enhance the visual
aesthetics for the Eagles’ online home and features
student-athletes directly on the front page. It will also allow for
increased interactivity for everyone using the page and easy,
user-friendly access to several new features.
“I believe a website needs to reflect your identity and what we stand for as an athletic department and institution,” said Ashland University director of athletics Bill Goldring. “I’m very excited and I think our users will be extremely excited for the change and the access that they’re afforded.”
The new site will feature videos, photo galleries, team schedules, up-to-the-minute GLIAC standings, new statistics pages, live stats, a student-athlete spotlight and several other features that will be unveiled in the near future. The new website will also feature a mobile site that will allow users to check up on the Eagles on their mobile devices.
The site will also provide information about the department and include information for visitors to campus and recruits. It will have links to various forms and handbooks for current and prospective AU student-athletes. The goal of the site is to provide everyone associated with the AU community with information in a modern way.
“In this current environment for a lot of people, the website is the first introduction to the athletic department, and sometimes the school,” said Al King, assistant athletic director for media relations. “It’s hard to imagine anything that’s much more important than a complete website.
“What PrestoSports provides is certainly a step forward and enhances everything we do,” King added. “It will help with recruiting and with coverage of our student-athletes, our teams and our coaches. We discuss ‘Accent on the Individual’ and our student-athletes should have the best experience possible in their collegiate careers.”
The AU athletic department also announced the implementation of a new Twitter page, which can be found at www.twitter.com/GoAshlandEagles, in conjunction with the new website. The new Twitter page, along with the Ashland University Athletics Facebook page (www.facebook.com/AshlandUniversityAthletics), will foster further interactivity between the athletic department and fans, students, parents, prospective student-athletes, alumni and community members.
Included on www.GoAshlandEagles.com is a sponsor scroll on the bottom of the page to display organizations and companies that support the Ashland University athletic department.
“We believe this will help the overall visibility of the athletic department, and hopefully increase our sponsorships,” said Rachel Bixler, director of sports marketing. “The site’s interactive features allow our department to connect more closely with our fans and let them become more involved with the Eagles.”
Ashland University joins Ferris State University, the University of Findlay, Lake Erie College, Lake Superior State University, Ohio Dominican University and Saginaw Valley State University as the seventh school in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to use the services of PrestoSports. The GLIAC’s own web page is hosted by the company, which is based in Rockville, Md.
“I’m very grateful for the hours that our staff has spent on this project as well as our relationships with PrestoSports and our other campus entities that helped with this project,” Goldring said.
For questions, comments and feedback regarding www.GoAshlandEagles.com, fans can contact Al King, assistant athletic director for media relations at aking@ashland.edu (419.289.5442) or Brendan Bittner, assistant sports information director at bbittner@ashland.edu (419.289.5974).