Senior cheerleader Kiara Burdge was the most-searched athlete on Coupeville Sports this year. (John Fisken photos)
Football fans celebrate Coupeville’s season-opening win over visiting South Whidbey in the #3 most-viewed photo of 2016.
Every day’s a surprise.
There are times when I’m sure a story will be well-read, and others when I think there was probably no reason to bother publishing what I just did, cause no one cares.
Both times, I’m usually wrong.
Case in point, the 6th most-read story here on Coupeville Sports in 2016 — https://coupevillesports.com/2016/12/09/it-makes-snow-sense/ — was a quickly tossed-off piece about snow cancelling a basketball game.
At the moment it was written I viewed it as little more than a quick public announcement, a way to alert local fans that the Wolf girls’ hoops team would not be in action that night as expected.
Imagine my surprise when the story started to spike almost immediately. Then really spike, then hit a completely unexpected level.
It made no sense. It was a nothing story.
At the time, I wrote it off as one of the quirks of having my work on WordPress.
From time to time, there are weird, brief, intense spikes that seem to have nothing to do with my actual readership.
Finally, maybe 6-8 hours down the road, it began to surface that Klahowya fans, having read that innocuous story, as well as some snarky side comments on Facebook and Twitter, were driving the readership spike on this particular story.
While Coupeville fans had shrugged and gone about their business, Eagle Nation had gotten its collective underwear into an epic twist, deciding I basically wanted to strap their daughters into a bus and send them to a fiery death over a snowy embankment.
As someone who has poked fan bases before (South Whidbey, ATM, King’s, the mouth-breathers in Sultan), I usually know when people are gonna get peeved.
This one, I did not see coming.
And frankly, still think is a fairly large pile of steamin’ crapola.
Having dissected that (very thin) story 100 different ways, I still fail to see how anyone with more than a fourth grade education sees anything offensive in THAT STORY.
But, ultimately, who am I to complain? Klahowya’s lack of reading comprehension/sense of humor brought in a fair amount of page views.
What else attracted eyeballs in 2016?
With eight days left, here are the top five most-viewed articles on Coupeville Sports:
As you know, #6 is a snow job, while #7, #8 and #10 documented the ongoing issues in the CHS cheer world and #9 — https://coupevillesports.com/2016/09/03/the-bucket-is-back/ — celebrated Coupeville thumping South Whidbey on the gridiron.
What will pop in 2017? As proven this year, I have no idea.
Though I am pretty sure I will tick off at least one rival school next year, maybe more. Maybe even on purpose this time.
That seems to be a given.
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