The athletic department put its redesigned website online in late August, providing an easier way to view scores, news and other team information.

The department chose Big Teams, a company that customizes a template with a school’s logos and colors, to design the site. It chose Big Teams after hearing about other Montgomery County schools’ satisfaction with the company.

This season, 13 of Montgomery County’s 26 high schools, as well as every high school in Virginia, will have athletic department websites designed using Big Teams.

Advantages of the new website include mass-emailing ability and up-to-date scores, athletic director Andy Wetzel said.

Wetzel updates the site daily with department information, while coaches maintain their specific sport’s page by posting rosters, pictures and scores. The website includes career summaries of Hall of Fame players along with a scoreboard and a calendar.

“The features I like the most are that we can put our team rosters on it and add bios and pictures,” cross country coach Stephen Hays said.  “To me, it becomes like a college team website.”

In keeping with the college-like format of the website, most cross country runners have player bios, which are formatted like those of colleges’.  This is in addition to the team rosters and contact information that all teams post.

The website costs $600 annually, with a $100 setup fee, but the department can earn money through the website from banner advertisements and a photo store.  They also get 40 cents every time the Big Teams application is bought through them.  The application is available on the Android Market and Apple App Store.

So far, the website has been well-received among coaches, parents and students, Wetzel said.

Girls soccer and cross country are the most active sports on the website, with coaches and parents posting summaries following most competitions.  Girls soccer team parent Randy Anderson writes summaries about recent games, while professional journalist and parent David Elfin writes stories on cross country’s meets.  Elfin hopes the stories will keep the school informed about the sport.

“Cross country is not a great spectator sport,” Elfin said. “Not a lot of people go to the meets and a lot of the meets aren’t even at home, so this way at least the school knows what going on.”