Blue Heaven Pages

My place on the internet will hopefully be known by the Blue Heaven Pages. This year, UNC began its students to run homepages through their e-mail accounts. I thought this was a great opportunity after just learning about the web the last year. I started my own web page with the intention of making something new and different. I made it into a Star Wars Page, but that had been done many times over. Then, I added a Friends Page, but that idea wasn't new either. That's when I thought of my interest that I was afraid I could do no justice-- Carolina Basketball. I just had to find an original slant to take.

I guess I'm fortunate in that I know several UNC basketball players because we lived on the same hall last year. Shammond Williams is one of my best friends, and I thought that people should be able to get to know the basketball players, especially Shammond, because they are interesting guys who are not just basketball players who appear on a court for a couple hours every few days. That's when I got the idea to make Shammond a homepage. When I told Shammond, he liked the idea, so Shammond's World was born. Little did we know, we had just made Shammond Williams the first college basketball player to ever have his own web page.

Once the page was started, I wrote a few different pages to get them to add Shammond's page to their links. Then, I posted the information in some appropriate Newsgroups. Next thing I knew, e-mail was flowing into Shammond's account; it was time for Shammond to start answering fan mail from the internet, which was probably another first.

The page became a success. Shammond and Coach Smith were questioned by reporters. Other people on the internet started talking about it. Finally, an article was written about the page in the Raleigh News & Observer. With this, I have become proud of Shammond's World.

In the meantime, Vince Carter's high school coach saw Shammond's page. Apparently, he was impressed because he called Vince and told him that he should have his own page. Vince mentioned the idea to me, and we finally talked about the possibilities at lunch one day. Soon after, Vince asked me to do a page for him. It would come to be known as Vince's Court.

Because of Vince, I decided that maybe more pages should be in store. The next page will probably be for Ademola Okulaja, then Antawn Jamison. The basic requirements are that the player is a friend of mine, an all-around nice person, and is interested in a page. Well, with a series of homepages, the likes of which have not been done previously, needs a name, so we have the Blue Heaven Pages. This series will hopefully become an ongoing project for me that all Tar Heel fans will be able to enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by,

Seth
12/95

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