After the largest offseason undertaking in UDPride’s six year history, the leading fan site for Flyer athletics has completed the first-phase of the UDPride Story Archives, a comprehensive time capsule of over 300 stories indexed chronologically dating back to 1998. Each story, written and edited by UDPride staff writers, gives UDPride a virtual log of anything and everything that’s happened in UD Athletics over the last few years and will continue to be updated indefinitely as new stories are added.

The UDPride Story Archives was a 140-hour project beginning in late March of this year to data mine and archive all outstanding stories remaining from Dayton Flyer Etc, and now UDPride.com. While stories from 1996 and 1997 appear lost, the final results are still overwhelming.

“This was one of those projects that looked great when you started it, but ended up feeling like the end would never come,” said UDPride Editor Christopher Rieman. “I pretty much ate dinner at my computer for three solid months before the light could be seen at the end of the tunnel. Converting the old stories from several different formats to a new universal format that could be indexed easily in chronological order was more time-consuming than I ever thought, but it gave me time to re-read much of our handiwork over the years and reflect on where we were and where we are now.”

The UDPride Story Archives consist of game recaps, commentary, and interviews that are a virtual almanac of recent Flyer history. “It was truly interesting to read some of the old interviews with players like Cain Doliboa or Joe Ashburn, or to reread the postgame stories after beating Kentucky or Xavier,” said Rieman. “Even the tough losses were interesting reads. It’s amazing how just two or three years can feel like an eternity when you live, breathe, and eat this stuff year-round.”

The Story Archives coincide with the 2001-02 return of UDPride.com after a summer hiatus for site research and development, even though the UDPride Message Board has been up and running all summer. “I’m just glad the worst is behind us because keeping the archives up-to-date from now on should be fairly easy,” Rieman said. “I always wanted a vault for fans to fall back on whenever they wanted to relive a moment in time, and I make it a point to never throw anything away. If I knew I’d still be doing this in 2001 way back in 1996, I might have listened to my own advice and had more stories to archive, but most of them before 1998 were mediocre stories about a mediocre basketball team so we’re probably better off without them.”