SLAM Partners with Fullcourt.com

SLAMonline catches up with the co-founder of a growing women’s hoop site.

by Peter Walsh / @goinginsquad

The women’s game is full of compelling stories and tremendous players on the prep, college and professional levels. Unfortunately, most of these stories never get told and the great players hooping across the country don’t get the recognition they deserve. Women’s basketball may never reach the popularity of the men’s game, but SLAM’s newest partner Fullcourt.com—which we now link to on our dropdown menu and on all women’s pages, and run content from—is looking to change that.

Full Court will aim to be the most comprehensive women’s site on the web and will cover the women’s game on all levels—from the top prep players in the nation to the household names of the WNBA. The site will be loaded with news, feature stories, photos and videos and will be the go-to site for die hard fans and those who may have their interest peaked by the NCAA Women’s Tournament.

I recently caught up with Full Court’s co-founder, Kelly Kline, to get the low down on everything her site will offer. With the NCAA Women’s Tournament in full swing and the WNBA season right around the corner, now is the perfect time to get familiar with everything that is great about women’s basketball. Be sure to keep an eye out for more from Fullcourt.com on SLAMonline…

SLAM: Can you talk a little bit about FullCourt.com? What features are you guys going to have, and what makes you stick out from other sites?

Kelly Kline: Fullcourt.com is going to cover all levels of basketball—high school, college and pro. Our sections are broken down into WNBA, NCAA and Prep. We also have an Olympic section, which obviously isn’t very full right now, but it is an Olympic year and that will be something we will have regularly on our site. In addition to those four main categories, we also have a really nice photo gallery section. We have a video section that’s full of player interviews, highlight reels, feature news stories, and we also have a forum. We’re just trying to engage the women’s basketball community in a pretty comprehensive manner.

We just want to be the spot for women’s basketball. We don’t feel like there’s another site out there that caters to all the aspects of the sport in an in-depth matter. WNBA.com does their thing and the NCAA does their thing and there’s a ton of blogs out there, but there’s not really—and I’m not trying to knock other major news organizations, they all do a great job—a place that covers women’s basketball really well, and that’s all we do.

SLAM: For someone who may not be wildly interested in women’s hoops, what will attract them to your site?

KK: I think people will be able to get a little bit of everything from us. The cool thing is, if you come to our site and you only want to see a prep story, we’ll have prep stories but they might be stacked up against a really interesting WNBA story that will pique your interest. There’s great ways to crossover to different aspects of the game, but it just depends what you’re looking for.

Are you looking for analysis? We got that. Are you looking for features? We got that. Are you looking for highlight reels of top prep players? We got that. You just want to talk about the sport? You can go to our forum. If there’s only one thing that brings you to our site in particular, we hope that you see that there is a lot more that you can be talking about within our sport or there might be other stories that grab your attention because now it’s all going to be in one cohesive unit.

SLAM: What is the history behind the site, how did it all come together?

KK: I actually launched a site three years ago called Inside Women’s Basketball. It was in magazine format and only came out four times a year. It was very, very photo heavy and feature-heavy, but it looked great and had a lot of videos and storytelling. But, it wasn’t a day-to-day site where you could get all your news, and I thought that was one of the things that was really lacking. So, I partnered with Lee Michaelson who owns a website called FullCourtPress.com.

They were on the opposite end of the spectrum, they were really old school with their analysis and had beat writers in every NCAA Conference and for the WNBA and all their teams—it was your traditional news site. But they didn’t do video or social media very well; they were doing a few features but could have been doing a lot more.

Inside Women’s Basketball was given a journalism grant by American University which allowed Lee and I to form a partnership. That was they catalyst that sparked the merger and the site redesign and how to comprehensively cover women’s basketball because now we had the funds to go back to the table and redo everything from the ground up. Full Court Press came on board, and we had a brand new product that we hope the women’s basketball community will embrace.