About Us

PaHeartlandSports.com was created out of a passion for sports and photography. The past few seasons, John Mathias and Bob Gaines continually ran into each other at high school games, inevitably discussing what they were going to do with the hundreds of photos they shot. As experienced photographers, they naturally took pictures that captured the action and emotion of both competing teams, even though Bob’s son and John’s nephew played for Lewisburg. During basketball season, Bob would use some of his pictures for the Green Dragons website he managed for the Booster Club.  Both gave a fair number of their photos to friends and relatives, to coaches for end-of-season banquets, and school officials for yearbooks.

As they began to informally discuss their common interests, Bob and John recognized that the 25-school Pennsylvania Heartland Athletic Conference covered a large geographical area with no single media coverage . . . the various newspapers only following the schools appropriate to their circulation. They also realized that, in most cases, school websites were neither complete nor current. Thus, they decided to create a website, loosely named after the PHAC, as a stage for athletic photos and information about all 25 schools. Bob’s experience as a sports columnist for a major daily newspaper in San Diego and John’s business background meshed perfectly to develop a model that will supply a useful service while being economically feasible.

Kicking off its inaugural season this fall, the site will provide a webpage for every school, along with pages featuring each of its varsity teams. Overall league and sport pages also will be activated. Using web-based technology, event outcomes will be reported by email or smart phone and posted almost immediately to the site. Schedules, rosters, directions, weather, and assorted information also will be offered. Links to existing conference, school, team, and booster sites will be accessible at no cost. In short, the website will be a focal point for news and information about the PHAC and its members.

Of course, at the heart of the website will be the breadth of outstanding sports photos, capturing the true flavor of high school athletics – the spirit and emotion of all the players. Photographers are being recruited to cover as many games as possible at every Heartland school and will post their photos as soon as possible after each event. They will photograph, review, crop, and submit only their best work. At the same time, they will agree to abide by the guidelines we have established. Be assured that no photo will be posted that is embarrassing or compromising to a young athlete in any way. As additional quality control, we will review each photograph before it is uploaded to our galleries. To compensate our photographers for devoting their hard work and expertise, photos will be available for families and friends to purchase.

In a trial period during Spring 2010 – concentrating on boys’ and girls’ events at just a few schools – we posted approximately 2500 photos to a web gallery. With very little promotion and no conference-related information as a draw, the gallery was visited more than 5000 times in 10 weeks. We believe our site will be a great benefit to the students, coaches, officials, parents, and fans of the Heartland Conference.

Co-Founders,

John Mathias and Bob Gaines