Matthew Bick

Introduction to LetsGoDU

The letsgodu.com project began out of a simple dilemma facing the University of Denver’s campus. Damien Goddard, a graduate of DU in 1989, is perhaps more devoted to DU hockey than any other superfan is to their own team of choice. Goddard began the LetsGoDU blog in 2005 as a one-stop shop for all the latest headlines concerning Pioneer hockey. Mr. Goddard was also very concerned about school spirit, or the perceived lack of that essential quality at DU’s home games. The student section was generally close to full, but rarely was it at a sellout level. The other portions of the well-respected Magness Arena, which had experienced sellouts leading up to and shortly after the back-to-back championship runs in 2004 and 2005, were beginning to seem more empty than usual. Mr. Goddard put this down to the previously mentioned lack of school spirit and undertook the mission to attempt to increase attendance.

Looking at this problem from a business perspective made the solution obvious: the atmosphere at the games had to improve. Mr. Goddard had seen with his own eyes the changes that the atmosphere had undertaken between his graduation and 2008. In his own days at DU, he partook in activities that made every game have the traditional raucous and electric atmosphere for which collegiate sports are generally known. However, as time went on, increased focus on risk by the university meant that some of these activities had to be curtailed, leading to the drop in school spirit. With fewer traditional activities at the games themselves, DU students began to lose interest in their team, except on major rivalry nights (games against Colorado College, as well as the University of North Dakota and the University of Minnesota). Mr. Goddard surmised that if he were able to educate incoming freshmen (essentially “new blood” for the arena), then he would be able to build excitement in them and in the hockey program.

The LetsGoDU blog was born from that decision. The blog became the top up-to-the-minute news source for DU hockey news and notes. However, a problem still remained. There was still no real “repository” for all of this “get to know DU hockey”-type information. The issue with the blog was simply that the information was organized by most recent postings. Keeping particular posts on top would have been unsightly and detracted from the blog’s original news purpose. The idea for the LetsGoDU website was the answer to this problem. The website allowed LetsGoDU to put all of the essentially introductory information in one place. New students or other new fans could link to the website and find all of the latest information on the program and its players.

The website’s initial construction began in late 2008.

The Website’s Premise

As already mentioned, the main idea for the website was to be the companion to the already successful blog. Whereas the blog was the premier destination for news about the Pioneers, the website was to be the premier destination for a knowledge base about the team, including information from player biographies to game reports to articles about DU hockey traditions. This meant evaluating what, exactly, an incoming freshman would conceivably need to know to become a DU hockey “superfan.” After an evaluation process, I identified traditions and information about the team itself as the most critical information areas. The rest of the site would be tailored around these specific areas.

Main Menu

The website’s main menu was created to try to demonstrate all of the news and reporting features of the site while also showing the excellent atmosphere that Pioneer Hockey can create. The reporting emphasis was achieved in the three main image-links that are the focal point of the page. They were links to the blog, the information section, and the forum that the website also had. Immediately below this was a picture gallery showing images from gameplay as well as from the audience. The presence of these images was also designed to help establish the spirit that Pioneer Nation, the moniker given to fans of DU athletics, had already established.

“Welcome To Boonetown”

The first main subject, traditions, gave rise to “Boonetown.” I invented Boonetown as the semi-fictional home of Pioneer Nation. The “Welcome To Boonetown” menu on the website contained a wide variety of information regarding DU, DU’s athletic history, and traditions at DU hockey games. To make the menu go hand-in-hand with the town motif, I created a map of the fictional Boonetown. I gave buildings names and had those names correspond to a map key. Both the buildings themselves and the lines in the map key served as links to their representative pages.

The most in-depth page in this section was for hockey traditions. This page essentially served as the destination for new fans, freshman and upperclassmen alike, to learn the chants traditionally sung by DU’s students during the games. These chants were compiled from personal experience with each chant having its own individual page.