NewsTrack – USCHO

uscho-logoUnited States College Hockey Online (USCHO) is the premier college hockey website and as someone who covers college hockey, I use the site all time. College hockey isn’t like college football or college hoops where ESPN and every major sports network has wall to wall coverage all the time.

Instead, the majority of national college hockey stories and articles are found on USCHO and College Hockey News. For this assignment, I’ll focus on USCHO because it is a far more dynamic site.

Most notably, the site runs and sponsors the national rankings that come out every Monday around 2:00 pm. There is a running future called Tuesday Morning Quarterback that is released once a week on (you guessed it) Tuesday that takes a look at notable games and results across the land of college hockey.

Most activity takes place on the weekends when games are being played. Across the banner is a live scoreboard that updates in real time with all the games being played that night. In addition, box scores and some recaps are posted after each game.

For such a niche sport, USCHO has a vast amount of material. Not only does the site have all the Division 1 men’s information, be it polls, rosters, stats, and standings, the site also has all that information for all three Men’s and Woman’s divisions.

The site is not great about advertising, especially on Twitter. They usually post the feature links a day or two late, but in all honesty, the majority of the people who follow college hockey already know to check the site. So, in that sense, I don’t think they are really losing much viewership.

One of the main traffic sources is Fan Forums. Here, diehard degenerate college hockey fans can create a thread and talk about their team, league, etc.

My favorite feature is the archive. The site has been around since 1997 and every article, feature and game recap is still on the site. You can also look back at past results, as every team’s schedule is archived as well.

Overall, If USCHO wanted to there is a lot that could be improved on from a marking standpoint. But, for what their market is and their budget, the site does an excellent job keeping the college hockey world informed.

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