SPORTS WITH 3

Thank you to Alex Oltmanns and the Pittsburgh Tribune Live for publishing an article about Sports With 3!

Read the full article below:

While most middle school students spend their free time playing Xbox or trying to achieve the high score on their favorite game at the local arcade, three of their peers are finding a more productive use for their time.

Noah Miller, a 13-year-old from Greensburg, teamed up with two other motivated junior high school students — Jinx Grand and William Scott — and started the website sportswith3.com. The site, which features sports articles on a variety of topics, as well as video and audio clips, has taken off ever since.

Already with more than 30 writers, the site's Twitter account has received retweets from the likes of Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III and ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale, as well as encouragement via email from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

“We were sitting in technology education (class) one day at school, and I went over to my friend and I'm like, ‘Do you want to start a website?' And my other friends said ‘Of course, yeah.' I asked my other friend and he said yes, so we started out just doing regular predictions, stats and writing normal articles,” Miller said.

That was last February, and since the creation of the website just a year ago, it has grown in popularity through strong journalism and social media campaigning to the likes of more than 2,100 followers on Twitter.

Miller, an eighth grader at Hempfield's Harrold Middle School, came across Grand and Scott's work through communication on Twitter and offered them lead positions with the site to form the trio referenced in the site's title.

A 12-year old Woodbridge, N.J., resident, Jinx Grand has become a valuable asset to the website's growth.

While being homeschooled, Grand also hosts his own home-based radio show, JGSportsTalk, where he spends time in his studio on the air and writing articles for the website.

“What I do is, I'm a writer,” Grand said. “I have a column called ‘Around the Big City,' which just talks about different New York City sports and the stuff that's happening around New York City. I also work in the social media end. I have access to the Twitter account, Facebook, the website and layout.”

Scott, the third member of the sportswith3 trio, is an eighth grader residing in Texas. Scott is the website's media and public relations manager who came into contact with Miller via Twitter.

Despite being thousands of miles apart, the website's three entrepreneurs are able to communicate effectively through Skype and videoconferencing.

While not yet even being able to drive, the three hope that doesn't keep people from discrediting the hard work that they have done.

“I know one of the things that is against us is our age, and people look at us as not legitimate and that we're just playing around at our age,” Grand said. “But we're trying to take this serious, and we're hopefully going to move from here on out using Twitter to build and using Facebook to build.”

As for the future of the website, all three have high hopes for what lies ahead and continue to stay committed to the growth of the site.

“I want to take sportswith3 to another level and be one of the best sites out there,” Miller said. “With all the work I've been putting in and the countless hours and nights, I want to be the best there is and extend my growth and tell others my age to chase their dreams.”