This year's competition featured keen competition among the most entries ever for the contest. To minimize the task of reviewing sites, clubs are asked to submit their sites for the competition. In addition, each club is required to provide a reviewer who would evaluate web sites of 10 other clubs. Results of this review are used to select the top group of large and small club web sites for final judging. This year, because of the large number of good sites, we were left with 6 large and 6 small sites after this preliminary judging. A panel of judges was then used to narrow these to our 3 top large and small club sites, and finally to select an overall "best site".

Eligibility

To be eligible sites had to be current RRCA clubs with web sites listed on Jan 1, 2005. They also were required to have a link to the RRCA from their home page.

Judging Criteria

Judging is done in each of two categories, small clubs with 200 members or less, and large clubs with over 200 members. Three Top Sites are picked in each division. Finally, one site is picked from among these six as the Best Site for 2005.

The judging criteria are listed below.

• First Impression
• Layout/Graphic Design
• Ease of Navigation
• Use of Technology
• Depth of Content
• Up to Date
• Uniqueness/Personality
• Contribution to RRCA

Here are this year's winners, (listed alphabetically in each division):

2005 Large Club Top Sites

• New York Flyers, NY
• Oregon Road Runners Club, OR
• Twin City Track Club, NC

2005 Small Club Top Sites

• Daytona Beachcombers, FL
• Kalamazoo Area Runners, MI
• Lake Ridge Runners, VA

2005 Best Site

• New York Flyers, NY

Congratulations to the web trifecta of Richard Brounstein, Ed Altman, and Dana McLaren who are responsible for this site. The Best Site award will be presented at this year's RRCA convention in New Orleans.

Comments

Again, my thanks to all the club reviewers for their help looking at the pages. Without the help of these reviewers, it would not be possible to reduce the judging job down to something manageable. Special thanks to Freddi Carlip and Kate McCombs who helped do the final judging.

The six clubs in contention for the "Best Site" all had their own strengths. In the end the deciding factors were use of technology, simplicity of navigation and support of the RRCA.

If you are building a club web site, take a good look at these 6 examples their structure, layout and content. If you are trying to improve your web site look deeper into how some of these sites are implemented with the new technologies available - databases, scripting and xml to name a few. These are powerful ways to keep your web site informative and up to date while minimizing maintenance.

Warren Finke webmaster