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Davey keeps prep
scores coming
By TOM
USHER
419-993-2089
tusher@limanews.com
 | Dave Spengler had one
ambitious idea.
At the
time, he wasn’t sure what he was getting himself
into.
Spengler wanted to
track the game-by-game results of a number of
boys basketball teams.
How
many did he want to follow?
Well, much more than a
few.
In the end, he
decided to track the results of nearly every
team in northwest Ohio. That includes 20
conferences and a few independents.
Every score is right there
on the Internet with amazing accuracy at
www.davey1.com.
If you
need to know how your favorite team’s opponent
has done this year or whom it has played, it’s
all right there. It’s especially handy for
following Lima Senior’s opponents, most of which
are out of our area.
“We
keep track of 172 teams,” Spengler said of
himself and partner Dave Sigler. “We have about
1,800 games in database and so far about 1,500
have been played. I’m only missing one score,
Monclova Christian Academy and Senceca East on
January 30.”
Spengler
updates the site with the new scores every day.
With an endless number of e-mails to schools, he
has also done an excellent job of staying on top
of the postponements.
“I
spend a couple hours a day on it,” he said. “It
depends on how many games are played the night
before. I also have to double-check some scores.
Sometimes, the winner and loser are turned
around.”
Spengler lives in
Bowling Green and is a 1971 graduate of Elmwood
High School. He’s been the school’s unofficial
statistician for years.
Spengler and Sigler
started a publication called Trail Trash 10
years ago. The heart of the publication was the
boys basketball tournament brackets.
The Web site for the
publication began in 2003.
Then, with the Ohio High
School Athletic Association putting the brackets
on line the last few years, the duo wanted more.
“After last year’s state
tournament, my partner Dave Sigler, said, ‘Why
don’t we do every schedule for northwest Ohio?’
I thought about it all last summer.”
The key was Spengler
writing his own software program. In this way,
if he inputs the winning score of a game, it
immediately registers a loss with the other
school.
Writing the
program was a nice fit with Spenger’s real job
of doing accounting and computer work for a
trash collection company outside of Bowling
Green.
Once the program
was in place, there was the matter of collecting
schedules.
“We sent out
letters to all the ADs of about 170 schools and
asked for their schedules. We also told them
they could submit scores and cancellations and
postponements,” Spengler said. “But, honestly, I
didn’t get much help. With about one exception,
that (getting scores from schools) hasn’t
happened.”
So how does he
get the scores and keep his site updated on a
daily basis?
“I check
every possible Web site I can think of,” he
said.
That includes The
Lima News, The (Toledo) Blade, The (Findlay)
Courier, the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the
Mansfield News-Journal and several others.
“I’m not surprised. I’m
impressed,” Elida coach Chris Adams said.
Adams said he uses the
site routinely to find out how teams on his
schedule outside the area (like Toledo Central
Catholic) are doing.
“Anything we as coaches
can do to help him, we should do,” Adams said.
If you click on The Swami
(OHSAA basketball), the list of conferences
comes up. A click on each conference reveals
each school and its game-by-game results.
The site also includes
commentary, boys northwest Ohio rankings and
tournament predictions for each sectional, which
are handled by the Swami (Sigler).
As for compiling girls
basketball results next year, Spengler said, “I
don’t foresee that happening. We’d have to hire
a staff. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it.”
And what about football
next year?
“No, I don’t
think so. We have have to set the boundary
somewhere,” he said. “When the season is over, I
want to do other things.”
Such as?
“I like to watch all kinds
of sports,” Spengler said. “And I like to set up
model trains.”
But for
now, there’s plenty of basketball to follow.
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| Thursday, February 17th, 2005 |
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