Since the birth of WWW.BETTENDORFFOOTBALL.COM in December of 2002 and the subsequent development and expansion of the website, countless people have emailed me to not only thank me for creating such a detailed and informational archival center, but also to ask me the simple question of, “Why?... why did you do this?” The first answer is of course the most obvious: “Why not?” Why not create a center for all things that are Bettendorf Football? Why not create a gathering place where all of the historical, archival—and sometimes, mythological—information can be stored for access for anyone... anywhere... anytime? Certainly, the Internet is a wonderful thing and surely most will agree that Bettendorf High School has a unique, rich tradition when it comes to the sport of football. To me, not preserving that history would be... well, almost criminal! A second answer I give is: “Right now, I have the time—or at least had it when I initially created the site.” Sure, I have a career, a family, and other interests that take up the majority of my time, but in 2001 when I began doing the preliminary research for the website, I definitely had more time then as I do now. Fortunately—because I consider the site about 90% finished—most of the “hard” stuff has been accomplished. Sure, there are still missing team and individual photos as well as general team information, but most of the time-consuming stuff is already done. On the other hand—because over the years I have gotten better at web design and programming—in the Fall of 2006 I decided that because I wasn’t satisfied with the layout of the site, I upgraded it by creating a new version and spent the better part of two months working on it… although, for the record, I am very happy with the current version and the feedback I’ve received is that it’s easierto-navigate so it’s going to stay as is—at least for the immediate and near future! The third—and main, real reason—I created the website stemmed from that fact that when I was going through graduate school from 2000-01, in one of my courses the major assignment was “…to create a sample webpage with the purpose that would be informational and/or serve a community or school in a positive fashion.” The kicker was: you had to base your webpage on something based in the real world. Long-story short, I thought about my alma mater and although the Bettendorf Community School District’s website is excellent, the webpage for the football team wasn’t as extensive as I thought it would be. Now, I’ll admit that I’m a bit biased and consider Bettendorf to be the premier high school football program in Iowa, so I was a bit amazed that someone had yet to archive the history of the program! For starters, among its many accomplishments, Bettendorf has: the most 4A state football titles in Iowa; not one, but three Hall of Fame football coaches in Merrit Parsons, Merv Habenicht, and Randy Scott; four notable winning streaks of 36, 30, 25, and 24 games, respectively; is home to Tavian Banks who is arguably the best prep tailback to ever play the position in Iowa high school history. Ok, enough—the list goes on and on and my point is that since Bettendorf Football didn’t have an archival center, it should and that is the fundamental reason I decided to do something about it.
© 2002-13 www.bettendorffootball.com
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Edition 5.0 – Febuary 8, 2013