Pine Grove celebrates its PIAA Class 3A softball championship Friday at Penn State's Nittany Lion Softball Park. The Cardinals defeated Bald Eagle Area 4-3 in 13 innings. (Photo courtesy of Pine Grove Athletics)

It was nearly a year ago when we gathered on a Saturday morning at the Schuylkill Haven Area School District’s Sports Performance Center. There was a Teener baseball state tournament going on outside, but inside on the turf the creation of a new high school sports website was coming into focus.

The gathering was a combination of radio personalities and former newspaper writers, former rivals on the Schuylkill County sports media scene, now teammates in a new online venture to provide in-depth and timely coverage of the Schuylkill League’s student-athletes and sports teams.

We had a lot of fun that Saturday morning, taking photos and filming hilarious video commercials to promote this new website called T102 Sports Now.

We were optimistic that www.t102sportsnow.com would be successful, but to be honest, we had no idea it would turn out this well.

T102 Sports Now launched Aug. 1 with a column that still ranks among the top five viewed stories on the site. A year later, the site is approaching 1 million views and has become Schuylkill County’s No. 1 source for local sports coverage.

• LAUNCH COLUMN: https://www.t102sportsnow.com/2024/07/31/im-back-a-new-source-of-hs-sports-news-in-schuylkill-county-launches-today/

Looking back over the past year, it was definitely a learning experience. We know we made some mistakes. There are things we can do better, more events that we should cover, more stories we can write, more videos and multimedia projects to undertake. Like every new venture, we look to build off those mistakes and continue to grow in the years to come.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the launch of T102 Sports Now, we tried to figure out a way to celebrate it. A year-in-review video put together by Eli Doyle showcases our work from the past year. It’s pretty impressive.

You can watch that video here:

We also realized that the first year of T102 Sports Now coincided with one of the most successful sports seasons in Schuylkill League history.

The Pine Grove softball team, Panther Valley wrestler Brenda Banks, Blue Mountain swimmer Noah Powers and track stars Viktorya Luckenbach, Noah Dolbin and Paiten LaPoint all won state championships. Tamaqua baseball standout Mason Ligenza was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the MLB Draft. Schuylkill Haven won the first Schuylkill League girls’ basketball title in school history. Major NCAA Division I college recruiters came calling for Powers, Pine Grove’s Callee Leffler, Minersville’s Dante Carr, North Schuylkill’s Aiden Zilker and others.

To commemorate those accomplishments, the staff at T102 Sports Now, T-102 FM and WPPA 1360 AM / A-106 105.9 FM put together a list of the Top 10 stories from the 2024-25 school year that we will count down one-by-one over the next two weeks.

The Top 10 countdown will detail those stories and provide links back to the coverage of those events.

The Top 10 schedule will go like this:

Thursday, July 17                                 No. 10

Friday, July 18                                         No. 9

Saturday, July 19                                  No. 8

Sunday, July 20                                      No. 7

Monday, July 21                                    No. 6

Tuesday, July 22                                    No. 5

Wednesday, July 23                           No. 4

Thursday, July 24                                 No. 3

Friday, July 25                                         No. 2

Saturday, July 26                                  Story on Top 10 views of school year

Sunday, July 27                                      No. 1

A look ahead

As we venture forward for the 2025-26 sports seasons, thank you to everyone who has become a regular visitor to www.t102sportsnow.com. We’re excited about the upcoming fall sports season and we hope you are too.

To continue our work, however, we need your continued support.

T102 Sports Now is funded entirely through advertising. The financial battle to recruit and sustain enough advertising to keep the website viable in a volatile economy was tough to navigate in the first year — and still exists. Programs like the 4th and Short Podcast and Touchdown Tips need sponsors … the more advertisers, the more games we can cover, the more videos and other things we can do. Thank you to the businesses that supported the site in Year 1 … we look to continue those relationships moving forward.

NOTE: Eli and I will film our podcast from your business if you become a sponsor. We’ll even have you on the show if you want.

One new advertising venture is the creation of small signature-type ads to recognize your student-athlete on your school’s team pages … similar to the ads you see in high school football programs. You can get more information on how to purchase those ads in the coming days.

Again, thank you for a great first year of T102 Sports Now.

Stay tuned for more great sports coverage in Year 2.