We’ve been blessed in the 10 plus years of this site of featuring the work of photographers Scott Kurtz (photo at left) and Willie Eashman (photo at right).
It’s been more than 10 years now since this website has been the home of Cal-Hi Sports, but our history of course goes back to the days of weekly newsletters that began during the 1979-80 school year. We’re not stopping any time soon, but there are some changes coming for the 2024-25 school year.
Note: We hope you enjoy this free post on CalHiSports.com. As mentioned below, Gold Club membership rates are going up on August 15. Current members or anyone signing up before August 15 will not be effected. This is therefore the best time ever to sign up. For details, CLICK HERE.
In the context of letting current Gold Club members of CalHiSports.com know about what to expect and to be fair to anyone who may be interested in becoming a member, here’s some updates as all of our coverage of the 2023-24 school year is over (except for state athletes of the year and Grid-Hoop all-state) and before we start doing our annual preseason football packages in the form of preseason all-section, all-area or all-county teams.
1. The subscription rates for Gold Club are going up. We have never done this before, but it’s time to help more easily cover costs and we hope folks will understand. The monthly rate will rise from $3.99 to $4.99, the quarterly rate will rise from $9.99 to $12.99 and the yearly rate will rise from $24.99 to $34.99. This will take effect on August 15, 2024 and will only apply to new, incoming members.
2. No one who is a current member will be paying more. If you are a current member or for anyone who signs up before the rates go up, be assured the charges are going to be the same for that rate you signed up with. That’s how it works with PayPal and its clients like us. If we wanted to raise the price for everyone and stay on PayPal, we’d have to wipe everyone’s account clean and start all over again. PayPal remains an extremely safe method of collecting subscriptions from members.
Cal-Hi Sports founder Nelson Tennis looks for a newspaper on microfilm at the state library in Sacramento in the 1990s. All California state high school records in five sports are based on Nelson’s research.
3. There are going to be times during the school year when the site will be operating while I am on a trip. I am turning 65 years old in September and my wife, Kathleen Moody, has retired from teaching. We have often talked about traveling once she retires and in an effort to show respect to her and to acknowledge the realities of traveling at certain times of the year, we will be taking trips during the school year. During those weeks, the site isn’t going to go dark but a week of state rankings may be missed and there will be more free-lanced features being run in those weeks. During our first big trip, which will be to London and Paris in early October, I’ll likely re-do and update the all-time greatest football team rankings package we last did about five years ago. We also have a lot of archived features we can update and post again during those weeks as well.
4. There will be a higher percentage of Gold Club (or premium) posts on the site than in previous years. Since we started working with websites such as Scout.com way back in the early 2000s, then continuing with Rivals.com from 2004 to 2008, presenting a mix of free and premium content has always been a key component of the business model. Preseason state rankings, players of the week and some game/event writeups will continue to be free for all to see, but many more of the game/event posts will now be premium. A higher percentage of postseason honors also will be premium, but it may only be an extra few of them.
5. More free-lance contributions from writers, graphic artists and social media creators will be accepted. I was hoping at some point to hire a managing editor to run the site while traveling or just take some items off of my plate as I get older, but it’s doubtful we would be able to afford to pay someone what he or she would deserve or want. Instead, we will be looking to add more resources from the free-lance side to help keep the site humming. If interested, email markjtennis@gmail.com.
6. There will be a site redesign coming soon. We have had a great tech partner since the site began with James Kerti, who is now working out of Portland, Oregon. James is not only going to continue for the upcoming school year, but is going to redesign the site to make everything look more fresh and modern.
7. Some of our content offerings for the upcoming football season will be different than in the past. I also have spent a lot of time in the last year discovering what content I enjoy doing the most (state record updates, historical features) and what content I’d like to do a lot less of (state rankings team writeups, looking up Friday night football scores late at night, chasing down state stat stars). We’ll therefore be posting more of what I like and less of the other stuff, even if the analytics show that it should be done the other way.
8. We will begin to start planning for the upcoming years. As much as someone loves what they do like me, there will be a point in which stepping back is inevitable. I do hope to get to 50 years of going to CIF state basketball finals, 20 years of CIF state football finals and the first CIF state baseball/softball finals. Will I still be doing this in my 70s? Who knows, but certainly not at the pace it’s going now. The Cal-Hi Sports state records, archives and all the content collections we have will eventually have to go to others as there is no one in the family who is going to take it over. We will begin to float out possibilities during the upcoming school year, including a sale, partnerships with others, and more.
Thanks very much to those of you who have renewed subscriptions and have been a Gold Club member of this site. It obviously couldn’t be done without that support.
Special thanks as well to longtime contributing editors Ronnie Flores and Harold Abend. They are two of the very best in the business.
And now, without further delay, we go back to getting ready for the upcoming California high school football season.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports
2 Comments
I have been a follower since the early 80’s and enjoyed the weekly newsletter since the 90’s! And of course now, a followier on-line.
Much I could say, but Thank You for the work you and your family have done to bring this information to CA Sports Fans through the Decades!
Mark,
Have been a follower of CalHi through the years and would like to thank you again for all you do. You provide what I consider to be “the Bible” of high school sports in California. Best of luck with the upcoming site changes and with your travel pursuits.