With A Little Help For Our Fans

June 10 will mark the 13th anniversary of the first issue of SportStars. That’s a Saturday. A few days earlier, we’ll likely be releasing Issue No. 220.

SportStars has seen a lot of changes over that time. What started as a 24-times-a-year print magazine focused mostly on East Bay high schools, evolved into a NorCal-wide product with as many as three regional covers at one point.

We then began a push to blend both digital and print together to deliver an even more well-rounded product. Then the pandemic hit us like it did so many other small businesses — many of whom were our primary advertisers — and we stopped printing and evolved into another version of ourselves. We poured even more effort into the digital space and began embracing newer formats for storytelling like podcasting.

Over all that time of staying on our toes in order to remain on our feet, we haven’t had a chance to poll readers on what is THEIR favorite version of us.

It’s time we changed that.

For the people at SportStars to continue what we love doing, we could use a little direction from both those who know us well, and those who don’t.

Throughout these past 13 years, reading SportStars in print or online has remained absolutely free. To our knowledge, we’re the only NorCal-specific high school sports media source who offers that. We want to keep it that way, so we need to know what will keep y’all coming back to the site during the week.

We’ll be launching a reader poll at SportStarsMag.com from May 12-19 and hope that many of you take the time to share what you like most about SportStars and how it can be even better.

We’ve also got some of our own ideas that we’re working on, and believe you might like as well. One of those things will be a weekly vote for SportStars Team of the Week. Why join everyone else in an Athlete of the Week vote, when we can honor more than one person while celebrating team accomplishment?

We’re also planning to continue with our podcasts. We recently revived our original podcast, SportStories, and have partnered with Youth Runner Magazine to focus the first six or so episodes on great names and moments in California track and field. We’ll have new episodes on May 10 and 17 that will each feature an Olympic gold medalist.

We might even dust off our 7 Friday Night football podcast for a special Spring Football episode.

All that, plus it’s time to wrap up the 2022-23 school year with some spring championship coverage as well. Come along for the ride, and let us know how we’re driving. ✪

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5.16.12

Del Oro 2012 graduate Austin Smotherman is photographed for a SportStars cover feature. Smotherman won the CIF State Championship as a senior after finishing fourth as a junior. He earned his PGA Tour card in 2021 and recently carded his first PGA Top 5 at the Mexico Open on April 30.