John and Donna Dye.  
John is the founder and editor-in-chief. Donna takes photos on the sidelines at meets for her popular feature, Donna on the Side.

DyeStat Reorganizes

November 2009 -- Dave Devine is named managing editor with responsibilities for day-to-day editorial operations, DyeStat California and DyeState Metro.  Steve Underwood remains as senior editor with responsibility for DyeStat Illinois.   Devine and Underwood share responsibility for national news.  John Dye remains as editor-in-chief.

DyeStat joins ESPN

July 2008 -- Student Sports, including DyeStat, was sold to ESPN to be part of its new RISE program serving all high school sports. 

DyeStat 5.0

by John Dye, founder and editor of DyeStat

PORTLAND OR 3/8/2006 - Today we launch DyeStat 5.0, a totally redesigned web site. We think it's pretty cool. But it's much more. It's better for you and better for us, with expanded features and a streamlined delivery system. Best of all - it's still free!

Better for you

• Easier navigation
• More interaction, so you can customize what you see
• More content
• The Pit - personal home pages where athletes can tell their own stories.
• Stats - DyeStat Elite will still tell you who the best athletes in the country are, but a new universal database will include all performances from meets. An athlete of any skill level can find out how he or she rates among all performances.
• More content produced by diversified teams - words, photos, video - with more live reporting, original features and webcasting.
• Regional home pages, with more news from the states.

Better for us

• New content management system - makes pages faster and easier to prepare, allowing us to use more editors and deliver more news on time.
• New performance database - automated data entry, more complex analysis, on-time delivery, interactive access - all with less manual work. Instead of 8,000 elite performances a year in the past, the new system is expected to include more than 100,000 performances a year.
• New advertising system - allows delivery of ads by page view on all DyeStat pages, greatly expanding the volume of advertising that can be sold, while preserving the majority of page space for news.
• New server - a dedicated set of three computers for faster page loading and five times the storage space.

A Better Future

This is the fifth major change in DyeStat's look and feel since we started our first web site in Maryland in 1996. We are evolving rapidly from a home-based hobby to a full grown business. Our new owners, Student Sports, are investing in the future of DyeStat by way of the new computer system and more and more staff resources. We believe that the new DyeStat can be funded by our great sponsors and advertisers, making it unnecessary to ask you to buy subscriptions.

And so we go into the second decade of DyeStat.

The First 10 Years

"It all started in 1995 when high school freshman Derek Dye announced to his dad, John Dye, that he had joined the track team at Middletown MD High School. Dad was only a casual fan of track at that point, but he was a lifelong sports nut, computer nut and stats nut. Dad put the three together along with track parent instincts and started a stat service (results and rankings) for coaches in western Maryland. Daughter Natalie, a year behind Derek in school, joined the team the next year.
Dad's hobby was always about keeping track of the kids' competition. As the kids got better, the sphere of interest grew wider -- county, region, and state. In 1997, Derek (high jump) and Natalie (pole vault) each won Maryland state championships. Now, Dad wanted to know how they ranked nationally, so he compiled national rankings from state meet results for boys high jump and girls pole vault. DyeStat became a web site the following year, with coast to coast coverage and national rankings.
DyeStat faced a big fork in the road in 2000. Derek and Natalie were both off to college, so track parent instincts were no longer in play. But Dad was hooked on high school track by then and wanted to keep the site going if sponsors could be found to cover the growing expenses. First Rivals and then Nike met that need, along with the National Scholastic Sports Foundation and other meet sponsors such as the New York Armory, Mt. SAC, Simplot, Great American, Golden West, FootLocker, Mobile AL, Sugar Bowl LA, Portage MI, Hilliard Davidson OH, Great Southwest, Golden South, the Indiana All Star Running Club and Iolani HI.
Site traffic soared each year, making DyeStat the most popular source in the nation for news of high school track and field and cross country. The hobby became a full time occupation, and a family affair. Derek regularly put his computer science skills to use in behalf of DyeStat. Mom, Donna Dye, started talking to people on the sidelines at meets and her page, Donna on the Side, became one of the most popular features of DyeStat."

DyeStat Gets New Resources

"2004 brought exciting times for DyeStat!

Donna and I sold DyeStat.com to BC Sports, the company that owns Student Sports. Student Sports is a print and online publishing company with longstanding and deep relationships with high school football, basketball and soccer players through the publications and special events it promotes.

BC Sports approached Donna and me because they would like to establish the same strong connection to the high school track & field athlete that they have with the other sports. They asked us to continue to manage DyeStat.com for the next four years (at least) while they explore ways to help us make DyeStat.com bigger and better.
When we started DyeStat 8 years ago, we had no idea what it would become. I sometimes called it a hobby gone berserk. It has certainly come to dominate my life. I had to consider that at my age (a very healthy 68, but 68 nevertheless), I couldn't keep doing DyeStat seven days a week indefinitely. In order to have other people take over some of my duties, we needed new revenues or outside investors. Fortunately for all of us, BC Sports stepped up. They pledged to continue everything we now provide and to add even more features. Donna and I will continue to cover all the big meets for years to come."
--John Dye