A sports fanatic and an Internet whiz have started a website dedicated to Island sports.

The site ? www.islandstats.com ? is being launched on Bermuda Day when Internet users will be able to log on to see where their favourite runners placed in the holiday marathon.

Partners Earl Basden and Sterlin Swan said the website was dedicated to all local sports and anyone who played a sport was likely to be interested.

?It features cricket, soccer, field hockey, football, basketball, netball, you name it,? said Swan.

On its launch the website will feature 18 sports.

?It will be a one-stop shop for sports and sports news headlines,? added Swan, who said he started developing the site a couple of years ago.

?But I really needed someone who was really into sports to bring it to fruition,? he explained.

?The timing was perfect. Earl enquired about getting a website developed and I said, ?it sounds like the one that I?ve already been working on?. So why don?t we just make like a partnership and do it.

?It has developed a lot faster since I met Earl.?

Basden said his love of sport had driven him to try almost every sporting endeavour at least once.

?My background is sport,? he said. ?It is all sports and any sport ? if I?m not involved in it, I?ll watch it. Sports is interesting, it is a relaxation, a pastime, and people enjoy it. I just like watching people have fun at sports.?

Basden said he got in touch with Swan through a mutual friend after last year?s May 24 Marathon.

?I was travelling with the Police and we were at an indoor soccer game in Italy ? we had Internet access, but finding out who won the race was the problem,? said Basden. ?But you can be anywhere and within a 20 minute period, you can know who won the race.?

Swan said they would be covering the May 24 Marathon this year.

?We will be on the scene,? he said. ?It is not a web-streaming thing, but you will be able to see who won in a timely fashion. We decided to launch on May 24 because a lot of people are involved in the running and they?d like to see who came in where. If we can get all that information, then it will be up for them to see it.?

?It is a popular event that a lot of people take part in, whether they run, or they are out supporting those who do run,? added Basden.

?People that see their cousin come by in the third pack will want to know where he placed. At the moment it is either the next day in the newspaper or they have to speak to their cousin, but they will be able to know shortly after.?

Basden played football and now coaches Prospect United in the First Division.

?Basically in different areas of Bermuda during the soccer season you get a lot of people wanting to find out what the English scores are, so you have a lot of people logging onto soccernet.com,? said Basden.

?There are also tons of people wanting to know about cricket, rugby, and those same type of people want to know what is going on in Bermuda.?

Until now, though, there has been no site dedicated to local results.

Swan explained: ?We wanted to fill a void by doing this type of thing,? noting that the partners had had some support from the advertising community.

?We have some that are really supportive and there are some that want to wait and see what type of response we get,? he said. ?There is a lot of interest out there for it and we intend to be visible and with visibility comes sponsors.

?They want to see that their name is out there with something that is active, not something that is stagnant or becomes dormant after three weeks.

?We will be updating sports as they happen and we have already started doing that, but we just haven?t launched it.?

Basden believes the website will meet a public demand.

?For instance if your company have a team that plays recreational sports, you can log on to find out (how they did),? he said.

?A lot of the corporate companies have teams that they sponsor and they will want to see what the scores are. In netball, you have Cellular One, Bank of Butterfield, XL and in softball you have the same sort of thing. There is also the Bank of Bermuda, the Fairmont teams etc. There are all sorts of companies that want their employees to go out and represent them.

?This (website) islandstats.com not only allows you to look at the team you are sponsoring, it also allows you to look at everyone else.?

The pair had already begun compiling cricket scores, said Basden. ?The first two rounds are on the site?.

?We will be at various locations updating sports and different people at different ends of the Island will know what is going on. It is funny how you can go around and everyone is on their cell phone asking someone ?what?s going on down there?? It is another way of circulating information.?

If there is a demand for SMS text messaging they will look into providing that service as well, said Swan.

?But in the meantime, if you go to the website, you will see everything that you are looking for.?

The partners said many people were not aware of how many teams competed in cricket and other sports.

?People don?t know how many games are going on over the weekend,? said Swan.

?The volleyball summer league is on and they play at Horseshoe Bay and Elbow beaches throughout the summer ? we are still gathering information on them.

?We have the schedules, which state the venues and times of sporting events.

?If you see that there is a sport that we are not covering, come over, e-mail us or telephone us to let us know. We want to cover all sports in Bermuda.?

For more information, call 500-0076 or email: infoislandstats.com.