When K.R. Jurgelevich posted a video of himself performing tricks with his lacrosse stick on YouTube, he simply thought six minutes of footage would entertain a few friends and teammates.
Jurgelevich, a junior who plays soccer and lacrosse at Portland High, performs his tricks on a pair of videos. Each has received more than 40,000 hits.
Now he has bigger ambitions. Jurgelevich will begin the official NCAA recruiting process in July, and he plans to use the Web site and a DVD to get footage to college lacrosse coaches.
"You just press a button and the video is uploaded," he said. "You can just send an e-mail to a college coach and tell him, 'I'm on YouTube.' "
YouTube is the most popular video-sharing Web site on the Internet. Its home page includes amateur videos of music performances, videos from televised awards shows and videos that satire politics, entertainment or public affairs.
But when it comes to using the Internet as a video-sharing source in high school sports, the impact is just beginning to be felt in Maine.
A quick query of YouTube shows 21 videos of high school sports in Maine, 31 of high school sports from Hawaii, 35 from Idaho and 14 from New Hampshire -- all states with populations comparable to Maine.
The Web site includes a handful of amateur videos involving high school sports in Maine, including videos of former Gray- New Gloucester running back Shane Beal and a highlight video of the Orono football team. The videos are posted by family, friends or people associated with an athletic program.
And the site is making it easier for college coaches to decide on potential recruits.
Tim Ryan remembers the time-consuming process of putting together video footage of himself to send to college football coaches when he went through the recruiting process 15 years ago as a high school athlete.
But nowadays, Ryan and the Bowdoin College football staff can review footage of a recruit simply by clicking a hyperlink. YouTube, he said, is "really going to revolutionize the (recruiting) process.
"It's been a lot more prominent over the past year or two," said Ryan, a 1993 Wells High graduate who is an assistant football coach and recruiting coordinator at Bowdoin. "It's almost like we're skipping through the DVD generation."
Others simply go to the Internet to watch athletic events they might not be able to see otherwise.
Dan Dearing, the boys' indoor track coach at Brunswick, has posted several videos of high school cross country meets this season on YouTube, videos complete with graphics, music and editing.
Cross country results are posted on Web sites but Dearing sees a niche for video sharing in the sport. As of Sept. 26, the four videos of cross country meets Dearing posted on YouTube received a combined 648 hits.
"Video just adds the next piece to bring runners the information that they are looking for," Dearing said in an e-mail. "YouTube is only one of several sites to post videos. I began there to get a feel for posting and tracking viewers."
"YouTube is a fantastic way to let everyone see what high school sports in Maine is like," added Nick Fornwalt, who plays hockey at South Portland High and is interested in cinematography
"Also, it's a great way to get word out there and showcase talent to a younger, high school audience. Everyone knows about YouTube, and it's very popular right now so why not jump on the bandwagon?"
Like Fornwalt, John Lough, a 2006 Deering High graduate, is an aspiring filmmaker. He posted two videos of the Deering wrestling program on YouTube.
"I always watched meets and watched how wrestlers competed, so I put together a video, then edited it and produced it," said Lough, a Portland resident and a former Deering wrestler.
Lough, like others, believes video-sharing is an untapped medium in high school athletics.
"If it gets big enough, I can see it becoming a resource,"...
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