RIP John. Met him very briefly at the 2012 Trials - didn’t want to bother him but he was perfectly friendly and open for conversation. Thanks for what you did for the sport.
I remember when John banned me for "impersonation". In actuality I had taken a quote from a meet director about an athlete dropping out of a meet and posted it to show a rumour had been officially confirmed. Mostly John let Steve Underwood police the boards.
John Dye was a revolutionary and changed the sports of xc/track forever. Every site that came along after dyestat - milesplit, citius, letsrun, flotrack should all be paying honor to the man who started it all
John Dye was a revolutionary and changed the sports of xc/track forever. Every site that came along after dyestat - milesplit, citius, letsrun, flotrack should all be paying honor to the man who started it all
Gary Verign had trackwire.com in Nor Cal way before John .....
Ill never forgive them for killing off the message board. was such a fun community (I was in high school at the time). used to chat with all the runners in my region and the "playground" chat room was a blast.
So many memories on that site. Internet isnt as fun since (reddit is too sensitive and "supportive", and letsrun is just a bunch of whiny boomers who are either unmarried and live in tiny apartments as a lonely 55 year old or are married and don't have sex with their wives (see post nupital thread). Yuck.
Really miss Dyestat. So many legends on that site. Remember this awesome troll named Mike Oh (trying to remember other names).
Watchout, King99, Mrr82, Mzungu, Leftfielder, Greenman, Daman, Jim Spivey, wineturtle, Phrisbee, Darkhorse, usnspecialist, magness, SteveU, Malmo, Rich Gonzalez (don't remember his username), Marquis De Sage...
pretty sure rich Gonzalez just used his real name on there, and some of those people are definitely more infamous than famous (including me in the eyes of some).
No disrespect to Track and Field News but for a high school runner in the mid 2000s it was DyeStat that was the Bible of the sport.
No message board community like the one fostered on DyeStat will exist again.
As someone who was a high schooler at the end of the 2010s/early 2020s, I don't really have any info on old DyeStat. I read somewhere that the founder started it because he wanted somewhere to compare his kid's results, and it grew a ton from there. I really respect what he did, even if it never directly had an impact on me. I fell in love with the sport because of all the information I could find online and all the arguments people had about who was the best, and it definitely wouldn't have been the same without what he did first.
What was the MB community like? How was it different from LR? I've loved LR since I stumbled upon it. There's a lot of crap here but it's not too hard to ignore. I guess I never knew what the alternative was though.
Rest in peace John, thank you for all that you did.
John Dye was a revolutionary and changed the sports of xc/track forever. Every site that came along after dyestat - milesplit, citius, letsrun, flotrack should all be paying honor to the man who started it all
Gary Verign had trackwire.com in Nor Cal way before John .....
Well. In the 1940s there were soft cover Stats Books, and paper magazine results newsletters. In the 1950s you could subscribe to same day results FAX services. From the 1980s engineering schools, large hospitals, aerospace firms, corporations, etc. had UNIX minicomputer based sports GIF photo galleries connected on the internet.
Ill never forgive them for killing off the message board. was such a fun community (I was in high school at the time). used to chat with all the runners in my region and the "playground" chat room was a blast.
So many memories on that site. Internet isnt as fun since (reddit is too sensitive and "supportive", and letsrun is just a bunch of whiny boomers who are either unmarried and live in tiny apartments as a lonely 55 year old or are married and don't have sex with their wives (see post nupital thread). Yuck.
Really miss Dyestat. So many legends on that site. Remember this awesome troll named Mike Oh (trying to remember other names).
Watchout, King99, Mrr82, Mzungu, Leftfielder, Greenman, Daman, Jim Spivey, wineturtle, Phrisbee, Darkhorse, usnspecialist, magness, SteveU, Malmo, Rich Gonzalez (don't remember his username), Marquis De Sage...
Wow, you just brought me back 15 years ago and more. I haven’t thought about those names in forever. Had conversations with many of those, left fielder, daman, phrisbee (knew personally). Fentonfreshman or something along those lines was a big one I remember. Someone else said it right, nothing again will compare to the closeness of high school xc/tf again. The major sites are too broad. You can go into duestat, your region, and your state and just talk with others who were just like you. As someone said as well, an actual good contribution to running, and way ahead of his time. Dyestat was part of my formidable years, wish they could write a book about it, lol.
Johns biggest accomplishment was saying FYou to the MPSSAA when they wanted to control what he put on his site and face to face said Fyou to Ned Sparks.
Watchout, King99, Mrr82, Mzungu, Leftfielder, Greenman, Daman, Jim Spivey, wineturtle, Phrisbee, Darkhorse, usnspecialist, magness, SteveU, Malmo, Rich Gonzalez (don't remember his username), Marquis De Sage...
Wow, you just brought me back 15 years ago and more. I haven’t thought about those names in forever. Had conversations with many of those, left fielder, daman, phrisbee (knew personally). Fentonfreshman or something along those lines was a big one I remember. Someone else said it right, nothing again will compare to the closeness of high school xc/tf again. The major sites are too broad. You can go into duestat, your region, and your state and just talk with others who were just like you. As someone said as well, an actual good contribution to running, and way ahead of his time. Dyestat was part of my formidable years, wish they could write a book about it, lol.
omg Darkhorse!!! LOL.
Dyestat was a brilliant early 00s site. United high school track and field and a big reason why we are so interested in it today.
They reported on things fairly and gave kids a way to see performances across the country without being overly invasive.
I remember the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, dyestat was the only place to read about Ritz, Webb, and Hall. And the explosion of talent of CA/West runners (Sara Bei, Amber Trotter, Alicia Craig)
He helped contribute to the increased attention and exposure HS track and XC began to receive.
The Ritz, Webb, Hall coverage was pretty epic and really drew me in. Also remember AJ Acosta running around on the message boards and talking about his Foot Locker exploits... Great site, he really did a great job casting a light on, and getting kids excited about high school CC & Track and Field. RIP John.
Watchout, King99, Mrr82, Mzungu, Leftfielder, Greenman, Daman, Jim Spivey, wineturtle, Phrisbee, Darkhorse, usnspecialist, magness, SteveU, Malmo, Rich Gonzalez (don't remember his username), Marquis De Sage...
Wow, you just brought me back 15 years ago and more. I haven’t thought about those names in forever. Had conversations with many of those, left fielder, daman, phrisbee (knew personally). Fentonfreshman or something along those lines was a big one I remember. Someone else said it right, nothing again will compare to the closeness of high school xc/tf again. The major sites are too broad. You can go into duestat, your region, and your state and just talk with others who were just like you. As someone said as well, an actual good contribution to running, and way ahead of his time. Dyestat was part of my formidable years, wish they could write a book about it, lol.
John and I worked very closely back in the late ‘90’s and up to about 2003. He had some of my products on his site store, as well as posted some articles I wrote way back then.
I remember him being extremely excited, helpful and with a true love of the sport.
I echo all of those saying what a massive impact DyeStat made in the late 90s/early 00s. My freshman year of high school was 1999. At the PA state meet that year, we had no idea what other kids in the state had run, just a bunch of rumors. By my senior year in 2002 I could look up the result of seemingly every meet in the country, and so many of us had communicated with other competitors on the DyeStat forum. Such a dramatic change in three years' time.