May 2, 2024

OC Sports Zone: Community First

Welcome to the zone

University’s Trojan Army always has fun at basketball games. We hope they and other groups follow the OC Sports Zone.

Welcome to the OC Sports Zone, a concept we’ve been dreaming about for a while.

Now it’s a reality.

We’re excited to be launching OC Sports Zone for Irvine, Tustin and surrounding communities in Orange County. We want this to be the place where you get your high school, college and youth sports news: where athletes announce where they are going to college and where teams submit their youth pictures and stories.

We want you to use the website and our social platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay connected to what’s happening in sports.

So why Irvine and Tustin to start?

It’s where this reporter spent 34 great years covering sports for the Orange County Register, Irvine World News and Tustin News. It’s an area we believe needs such a website.

In the ever-changing media landscape across the country, with so many challenges, we know what we’re getting into, especially since this is an independent company. But we believe we have an opportunity for something fresh, something lively and a product which can be constantly updated. We pledge to be fair, accurate and honest.

We also need some help. We need readers, lots of them. We need advertisers too, lots of those, so that we can provide long-range coverage.

It’s our belief that a good story is a good story, no matter what city it’s in. Our website will evolve and this is just a starting point.

Special thanks are in order to our initial advertisers, Dan Selway and his football camp and Greg Sasaki and the Irvine Girls Softball Association. We secured an additional commitment tonight and others have expressed an interest.

We’re grateful.

This has been a team effort led by our sales director and social director Gabriel Calderon, who has been with the project since day one and brings fresh, innovative ideas. It’s been Gabriel’s message that community comes first and he wants as many people as possible involved in our social media platforms. He’s happy to work with you to get you involved.

Our very talented designer Fernando M. Donado has come up with a site which we hope you will find lively and innovative and has helped tremendously with getting us ready in many areas. He’s also an excellent photographer and we feel fortunate to have him on our team as well.

Jorge Medina, many former Orange County Register colleagues, community members, coaches in Irvine, Tustin and other cities have been so supportive. We will always remember and appreciate that.

We want you to enjoy our site. We also have a few rules regarding comments. Please keep the conversation civil: no personal attacks, no slanderous statements and no profanity. We will be monitoring for that and those who violate our comments policy will be banned from commenting again.

This is sports….It’s supposed to be fun.

Please let us know what you think. And what we can do better.

Please enjoy the OC Sports Zone! And thank you for helping us live our dreams!

Tim Burt, owner, editor

email: timburt@ocsportszone.com

Gabriel Calderon

Social media director and sales director

email: gabriel@ocsportszone.com

Fernando M. Donado

Designer