I forgot about the Nike fan boi webs. I know Nike is full of propaganda pushing their own narrow, local agenda. It's masqueraded as journalism. The content demonstrates it's obviously public relations and advertising. I prefer a neutral view on instagram, facebook, others.
Never met John Dye, but certainly appreciated his work from afar. I was a daily reader in the late 1990s through the buyout from ESPN. Had a registered name that some people knew and corresponded with (but not so active or memorable to be a “legend”). We spoke with and read about this great sport in a way that was not possible before that. His work was useful to me and I did post thanks to him back then, as I have done here for Rojo. Wejo, and others.
A few years ago, I got back on Dyestat when my high school started having a good team again. Follow some teams around the country including the local one where I now live. The sport is in some ways purer at the high school level than it is at the professional level. The posts here speak of Dyestat on in the past. I was on it to check meet results a few hours before his passing was announced there and again a few hours later, so it was a shock in the present, not just nostalgia, even though John has been gone from the site for years. It still has very rich meet content and podcast style interviews (which I rarely watch, but must be popular). Dyestat has more content now than 25 years ago, we just take it for granted. Miss the 25 years ago boards there, when it was fresh and new to speak with runners from all over. Tons of memories. Post here pretty regularly but just to chime in, always with a one time name. Different era.
John Dye is one of those people who lived the adage “if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” As many inventors/popularizers, he developed what he needed and then shared it with others. He was very hard working and his work lives on. God bless him.
Dyestat introduced me to the finer aspects of the sport while in high school during 99-03, I’ll never forget the coverage of guys like Webb, Ritz, Hall, and even Solinsky. Mr. Dye had an incredible passion for the sport and kids, this was obvious in his work and product. RIP John.
I vaguely remember some saying that this board was essentially going to hell in a hand basket due to swarms of people coming here from DyeStat. Was it not true that some were saying that?
I don't know about that one. Letsrun back around 2003...it was building tolerance to inappropriate. There might not have even been a moderator back then in the days when Myspace was the place to hang out. I know for a fact some of the legendary pro triathletes that were also big high school track and field fans were on here making those limits.
I was around for some of those MySpace groups in the late 2000's. Prince would troll the heck out of those boards. SteadyEddy was another that was pretty active there as well.
I had two screennames in those times (plz don't ban me for my multiz). xccris and then when my teammate gave me crap for posting on the D3 thread I changed it to Runthenight. Who were you guys on there?
FAX Machines cost $1000 in the 1970s. You had to have an extra land line to plug it in. Then they started making cheaper machines that would share the line with your voice phone line. Its quick to get FAX'ed results. The print newsletters took days to arrive in the USPS mail. Now it's all on the results crews websites and we don't need dyestat. Is dyestat still around?
Without exaggeration, John is right up there with Ryun, Pre, Shorter and Bowerman in terms of his contribution to running in America. If you ran, coached or followed high school track in the late 90s to early 2000s, you know what I am talking about. John and the brothers Johnson brought track and field into the Internet age. It's only when I look through my old issues of Track & Field News that I recall what it was like before DyeStat. Success forced DyeStat to change, but it never changed John. R.I.P. John Dye.
Without exaggeration, John is right up there with Ryun, Pre, Shorter and Bowerman in terms of his contribution to running in America. If you ran, coached or followed high school track in the late 90s to early 2000s, you know what I am talking about. John and the brothers Johnson brought track and field into the Internet age. It's only when I look through my old issues of Track & Field News that I recall what it was like before DyeStat. Success forced DyeStat to change, but it never changed John. R.I.P. John Dye.
His contribution is huge, but I wouldn't compare him to athletes, coaches or footwear innovators. I'd compare him with other media in the sport, like LRC, T&FN, etc. He's truly a legend in pioneering media in our sport.
Without exaggeration, John is right up there with Ryun, Pre, Shorter and Bowerman in terms of his contribution to running in America. If you ran, coached or followed high school track in the late 90s to early 2000s, you know what I am talking about. John and the brothers Johnson brought track and field into the Internet age. It's only when I look through my old issues of Track & Field News that I recall what it was like before DyeStat. Success forced DyeStat to change, but it never changed John. R.I.P. John Dye.
His contribution is huge, but I wouldn't compare him to athletes, coaches or footwear innovators. I'd compare him with other media in the sport, like LRC, T&FN, etc. He's truly a legend in pioneering media in our sport.
I wouldn't compare them with him. He took high school running at the grass roots level and elevated it to national recognition, influencing God knows how many young runners.
I echo all of those saying what a massive impact DyeStat made in the late 90s/early 00s. My freshman year of high school was 1999. At the PA state meet that year, we had no idea what other kids in the state had run, just a bunch of rumors. By my senior year in 2002 I could look up the result of seemingly every meet in the country, and so many of us had communicated with other competitors on the DyeStat forum. Such a dramatic change in three years' time.
and
JMysterio wrote:
I particularly loved the exchanges for the first NXN championship where there were no qualifying regions and no one knew how good anyone else was until the race itself. xemptyz
The sport used to have a lot more mystery as we didn't know so much. In HS, our rival in our private school conference was in Tulas, OK. We were in Dallas. I'd go to the public library and look up their results on microfilm a week or two after the meets (or maybe it was a hard copy? ). But it was wild to have info on them.
Now we know everything and so the actual events are less suspenseful.
Heck, I remember 10 or 15 years ago thinking we could profile one elite for NYC Marathon each day as it was amazing to know who all the elites were and what races they had done. Now we take it for granted. We'll write a 3000 word preview and dump all the names in their in a single article.
I never spent much time on dyestat or the forums but did think we should maybe start a state by state forum when they got rid of theirs. Maybe we still should. It's just hard to get enough posts to get the communities going. Now that we have a full time programmer, I wonder if we could automatically show a user like the top 10 posts form the "state forum" in your main feed.
Slowly they would get enough posts and the state feeds would build out.
Great idea on the state boards. Even if certain ones are not really busy, it could be a place where your most active runners and coaches post info on great areas for training runs, hilly areas, best smooth trails, low cost races for real runners not expensive jamborees for thousands of people, etc. Your site already has tons of traffic, but could use local communication resources for runners where they train and people to correspond on local races and developments. It could help strengthen 1000 local running communities. It would also be a nice reference for runners who travel, where to run when they get there, etc.
Tip: get some extra filters/moderators to keep the verbal graffiti/spam/immature testing of limits postings out of those boards. I am sure that once you formed them, you’d get a capable volunteer from each state to supplement what you do at the office. Part of what made early Dyestat boards (and early Letsrun boards) so valuable was that the posting of garbage had not yet become a thing. It was helpful pay it forward type content, which I am sure is an important part of why you started this site and have kept it going so reliably for decades.
Thanks again for your work, both you and your staff and many volunteers.
There is still no site today that had the passion of early 2000s Dyestat. The debates on there were incredible. It was also amazing to see national stars like AJ Acosta, Kyle Merber, and Chris Derrick comment on there while still in high school. I doubt we would have XC events like RunningLane and NXN were in not for the online HS community that Dyestat essentially built.
Bill Clinton's Telecom Reform Act 1997 prohibited the Baby Bells from forming trade blocs. That opened competition. Xerox Palo Alto SGML markup language for commercial printing was simplified by world wide web and placed on the research internet. By the later 1990s consumers had internet phone connections. Drupal and Wordpress dominated in the early 2000s. IAAF used Triple Tre ?sp? content management system from Italy I think. Then we started having Wealthy Northeasterners, fan Bois, HS coaches give us free TF, XC, etc. websites.
Internet forums came from dial-up bulletin boards. Around 1980 my dad had a Bass Fishing bulletin board on an Apple 2 or Northstar Horizon I can't recall exactly. He had a rotary with two T-1 lines and a RJ21. That's 24 modems with land lines. Cost a fortune each month but my Dad loved Bass Fishing. People would call in by modems onto the forums to spread advice and tell tall tales. Later on, Dad got job at a Oil Drilling company and they let him put the board on a DEC mini computer. His club paid for the T-1 lines.
Before it got bought out and ruined, Dyestat was my go to for rankings, results, stats, everything. Each fall as it was coming closer to Nike regionals, this site was a vital source of information to prepare team strategies. He made a huge contribution to the sport.
I know nothing about this man. Was he a runner or a coach? Did any of you know if he was in poor health? RIP.
They downvote you when you say you knew nothing about the guy and then when I Google his name it is some story about an actor from a show called “Touched by an Angel” who died in 2011, so the guy was not famous. But it sounds like he really made a difference.
I echo all of those saying what a massive impact DyeStat made in the late 90s/early 00s. My freshman year of high school was 1999. At the PA state meet that year, we had no idea what other kids in the state had run, just a bunch of rumors. By my senior year in 2002 I could look up the result of seemingly every meet in the country, and so many of us had communicated with other competitors on the DyeStat forum. Such a dramatic change in three years' time.
and
JMysterio wrote:
I particularly loved the exchanges for the first NXN championship where there were no qualifying regions and no one knew how good anyone else was until the race itself. xemptyz
The sport used to have a lot more mystery as we didn't know so much. In HS, our rival in our private school conference was in Tulas, OK. We were in Dallas. I'd go to the public library and look up their results on microfilm a week or two after the meets (or maybe it was a hard copy? ). But it was wild to have info on them.
Now we know everything and so the actual events are less suspenseful.
Heck, I remember 10 or 15 years ago thinking we could profile one elite for NYC Marathon each day as it was amazing to know who all the elites were and what races they had done. Now we take it for granted. We'll write a 3000 word preview and dump all the names in their in a single article.
I never spent much time on dyestat or the forums but did think we should maybe start a state by state forum when they got rid of theirs. Maybe we still should. It's just hard to get enough posts to get the communities going. Now that we have a full time programmer, I wonder if we could automatically show a user like the top 10 posts form the "state forum" in your main feed.
Slowly they would get enough posts and the state feeds would build out.
That's a great idea because most people will not only post on their state but can also check the vibes on the other states. And with the increasing invites now where teams are travelling out of state you can also get some mid season results for comparison.