Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

Five years ago Your Prep Sports published its first story.

Well, five years and 15 days ago.

Just like the five-year anniversary of Your Prep Sports launching snuck up on me earlier this month so too have the last two weeks – which is why this column is a little late.

What’s the saying? Time flies when you are having fun.

That old adage fits perfectly when describing my time with Your Prep Sports.

Five years has flown by so quickly I had to check the date several times to make sure it really had been five years but I have loved every day (all 1,841 of them) as Director of Content at Your Prep Sports.

Lots of those days spent telling the stories of area athletes, coaches and teams have left lasting memories.

Long days at state track or state wrestling meets. Early mornings for state cross country. Late nights on football Fridays.

I’ve enjoyed them all.

Few days have stood out to me like the five-day stretch earlier this month when Your Prep Sports announced the donation drive it was running for the five-year anniversary of the site.

The generosity showed by the readers and the followers of this site during those five days got the best of my emotions more than once.

It wasn’t just the donations that poured in or even the encouraging messages that came with nearly every one that pulled at my heart strings.

What had my eyes watery several times that week was the reminder of the relationships that have been built over the past five years.

With every donation received my mind immediately went to a conversation I’d engaged in with that person, or a story I’d written about the school or team they follow or even one of their children.

I was reminded of how many people I have had the opportunity to meet over the past five years, how many stories our site has been able to tell, how many people value the coverage of the young people in their communities that we provide.

That’s what made me smile over and over and over again during those five days.

Building those relationships were the reason I believed in the vision we had for Your Prep Sports.

One of the first things to appear on Your Prep Sports was an introductory column written by myself explaining how the site got its name.

I re-read that column a few weeks ago.

It was even more corny now that it was then but the final few graphs stuck with me as donations flooded in.

Your Prep Sports is named what it is because I didn’t want this site to be about the people writing the stories but instead about the people those stories are about.

I wanted it to be your news source for your schools and teams, your coaches, your community and your kids.

This is your website and a few weeks ago through the donations and support of so many of you I got a rousing reminder of how much people appreciate what it has become.

To everyone that took the time to donate, I simply can not thank you enough.

No words will ever be able to explain how much the support showed to Your Prep Sports meant to me.

Five years really did sneak up on me.

The best part is while that time was flying by I was having so much fun.

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