ALUMNI PROFILE
CHEEK GIVES SMALLER SPORTS A HOME
ON
DAILYHOUSE.COM By Adia Waldburger After long track speedskater Joey Cheek
captured America’s heart and two medals at the Turin 2006 Olympic Winter Games, it seemed like everyone knew him and his sport. But, like many Olympians and ath- letes in other non-mainstream sports, the spotlight soon shifted elsewhere until the next four years came around. That wasn’t good enough for the smart and savvy Cheek, a recent Princeton grad and champion of various humani- tarian causes. Cheek is the kind of guy that sees a problem and doesn’t waste any time solving it. Just weeks after his Ivy-league graduation, Cheek had plans in place to launch a website devoted to non-mainstream sports. “The main problem is there is no national media that covered any non-mainstream sport on a regular basis,” Cheek said. By July 2011, Cheek’s creation of Dai-
lyHouse.com was on the web and pro- ducing content. The website is aptly named after the house located on Daly Avenue in Park City, Utah, that served as a gathering place for athletes during the 2002 Olym- pic Winter Games. That’s just what Cheek is envisioning – a place where athletes can gather online.
The idea was simple. Find athletes that compete in these lesser known
sports and encourage them to blog and write articles to share. Cheek figured that nobody knew their sports better. These athletes could add an inside and thorough perspective. “The technology we have makes it re- ally easy to create content,” Cheek said. Just about every smaller sport can be found at
DailyHouse.com. Everything from Olympic sports like speedskating and gymnastics to more extreme and fringe sports like skateboarding and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) have a home at the DailyHouse. There are also posts about non-main-
stream sporting events, such as the re- cent article Cheek wrote for Olympic fol- lowers out there: “If You Love Olympics, I Hope You Love Traveling. US Cities Can’t Bid Before 2022 Games.”
Although the site is still in its early stages, Cheek has been encouraged by the response. He is writing a bulk of the posts with the help of a few other edi- tors, as well as developing a following on Twitter and Facebook and has a hand- ful of guest athletes who have posted to
18 RACING BLADE Fall 2011
www.usspeedskating.org
the site. Fans of these smaller sports are already becoming loyal to DailyHouse. com and Cheek expects the numbers to continue growing.
“Social media has come to the point as a business that we can find the people that are already interested,” Cheek said. Besides fans, Cheek really wants to
create an atmosphere online that echoes the Daly House – somewhere to share, read content about their sport and about other athletes and really generate a con- stant buzz about their respective sports. “Ultimately, the hope is that it benefits
everyone,” Cheek said. “So far it’s been really positive. People seem excited.” Although most of the site showcases blogs, Cheek has mixed in plenty of other new media. X-Games videos and compe- tition results add to the written content on the site. Cheek says that even though people like fellow speedskater Apolo An- ton Ohno and others are quite popular on Twitter and Facebook, he hopes that
DailyHouse.com will give fans and ath- letes alike a home base for all their non- mainstream sport information.
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