Recapping Hopewell Sports Nation’s 6th Month Anniversary; Looking Ahead

It’s not been easy but due to a lot of hard work and dedication, Hopewell Sports Nation has reached our 6-Month Anniversary.

Back in July, we launched this website for the sole purpose of giving the many athletes in our community attention for the hard work and accomplishments they’ve achieved.

During these past 6 months, HSN has published 486 articles and have done our best to cover as many youth, junior high and high school events in Hopewell as possible. Since launching, Hopewell Sports Nation has had over 100,000 views to our website. For the first time, sports such as in-house baseball, junior high basketball, girls’ and boys’ soccer, girls’ volleyball, high school swimming, cross country and high school bowling are getting attention in Hopewell. Have we covered them as much as we would have liked? No, but the last six months are a blueprint for what we’d eventually like to achieve.

Something else that we’ve been able to achieve is to try and give back to the community through Hopewell Sports Nation Scholarship Fund that we’ve launched. If you’re a Senior and plan to attend college next year, we encourage you to apply for the scholarship. Two students (one male and one female) will be selected later on in the school year.

HSN Scholarship Launch!!!

This scholarship became a reality in part because of the generosity of local businesses that signed up to be sponsors on HSN. In case you’re not aware, a portion of every advertiser’s monthly fee goes back into our scholarship fund. We’d like to thank and recognize the following businesses for being with us at some point since July. First and foremost, thank you to:

1. Title Sponsors A&S Federal Credit Union and Shulligan’s Bar & Grille for being our cornerstone sponsors and a huge part of what we’ve been able to do.
2. Other important sponsors include Bruster’s of Hopewell, Frank Walker Law, A’Brewed Awakening, Greater Pittsburgh Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine, Baron’s Auto Service Station, Brandon Davis and CCR Painting, Moon Golf Club, Thoro Clean Cleaning Service, Martin’s Lawn Service, State Representative Rob Matzie and Brandon Guiliani Principal of Seubert and Associates.

We truly appreciate every one of you that showed faith and belief in signing on with us. Thank you!

However, as we look ahead, we have plenty more than we want to accomplish to make our unique website even better. I refer to it as unique because it is. We’re proud that the Hopewell is the only school district in the WPIAL that has a website that covers their male and female athletes 12-months a year. That’s something that we take pride in and hope that everyone recognizes and appreciates.

BIG GOAL FOR 2024.

One area that we’d like to do better in is to have more students from the high school help us out with our writing so that we’re able to be at more events. A huge way that we’ve been able to cover as many sports as possible is because of the cooperation that we’ve received from coaches and parents from some of these sports. They’ve been kind of enough to send us game recaps or information regarding these games, which have allowed us to post stories. Thank you (and you know who you are) to everyone that’s helped us with this, and we hope that it continues in 2024. If you’re a coach or a parent and would like to start doing this, feel free to send information/recaps to mvukovcan@gmail.com or directly to our website email address: hopewellsportsnation@gmail.com where anyone of us working here can help post your article.

Ultimately though, we’d like to have student writers on our staff to be able to do this as well. If this is something your child might be interested in doing, once again, reach out to us at any of the below contacts and we will be eager to discuss opportunities with you:

1. Mike Vukovcan: mvukovcan@gmail.com or text me at 724-462-5756
2. Carl Santamaria: santamaria906@comcast.net, text 304-224-9067
3. Company Email: hopewellsportsnation@gmail.com

We’d like to compensate these writers in some way and that brings up something else that is vital if we’re going to be able to stick around in 2024 and long-term.

FINANCES.

I know this becomes a touchy/delicate topic but I’m going to be transparent. To this point, the work done on Hopewell Sports Nation has pretty much been done for very little compensation. From the start, we realize and were OK with this because we wanted to make this work and knew that any money brought in, had to go towards establishing the business and towards things we needed to finance/get done.

Bottom line is that in 2024, bringing in more revenue is going to be crucial in order for us to pay writers, sponsor teams in the district, improve our business and grow.

Thanks to our sponsors!

How can you help us out with this?

If you’re a business and would like to become an advertiser with HSN, please reach out to us:

1. Mike Vukovcan: mvukovcan@gmail.com or text me at 724-462-5756
2. Carl Santamaria: santamaria906@comcast.net, text 304-224-9067
3. Company Email: hopewellsportsnation@gmail.com

We have different advertising rates for you to look at to become general sponsors or you can be linked directly with a team. HSN is trying to get specific sponsors for the following upcoming sports in the spring:

*Hopewell High School Baseball team
*Hopewell Softball Coverage 
*Hopewell Junior High Baseball coverage
*Hopewell Youth Baseball at Kane Road
*The Future Is Bright In Hopewell Athletics (weekly series that we started last week)

The plan is to try and find writers and photographers to cover these teams and the money we bring in would allow us to compensate these workers, along with investing in our scholarship fund.

Boosters:

Another area that we’d like to improve on is having a better working relationship with the Booster Clubs with the specific Hopewell teams. Those clubs are vital to each team as they look to raise money throughout the year to help fund things in their particular program. Hopefully, we can find a way to work together to assist you, as well as helping HSN. If you’re a board member with one of these sports, HSN would love to meet with you in the future to find a way to work together, whether that be through fund raising or with merchandise sales. Let’s partner together to grow the team organizations and the student athletic experience.

The other way that you can help Hopewell Sports Nation is to simply make a one-time donation to us, if that’s something you’d be kind enough to do. 100% of this money, would go only towards the scholarship fund or towards helping with our expenses in 2024. When you’re a small business, anything would help and would be greatly appreciated.

Venmo: @hopewellsportsnation

PayPal: hopewellsportsnation@gmail.com. 

I know that this was long, but we wanted to let you know the progress we’ve made, our plans for the future and how we can make Hopewell Sports Nation better in 2024!

THANK YOU FOR BEING SUCH AN AMAZING TOWN WITH AWESOME STUDENT ATHLETES, WE LOOK FORWARD TO A HUGE 2024 YEAR!!!

Be Great! – Mike, Carl and Annie