Website gets people active

(CNS): CaymanActive.com, a website that follows and promotes the Cayman Islands sports and fitness scene, celebrates its first anniversary this week. The website was originally created by Andy Bonner but has subsequently been propelled forwards by a number of contributors across the whole community. “When I look back, I’m pleased with how far we’ve come. When we started we had a basic information site, and now we have a vibrant community with over 300 people contributing content, registering for events, watching daily videos, and monitoring their health and fitness goals amongst other things and over 1500 people receiving our monthly newsletter,” Bonner said.

Site Members can connect with each other, blog, add news, views and photos onto the website and upload class schedules or even pay club subscriptions. The whole concept centres around bringing advanced web capabilities to the community for free, Bonner said, noting that this eliminates the costs that have traditionally been associated with having these features for the sports and health clubs and organisations, and reduces the administrative overheads they face.

CaymanActive.com offers a fun and interactive site which ultimately promotes a healthier lifestyle for all, Bonner said. Over 40 on-island activities are represented and a quick click onto the drop-down menu links users to their chosen activity, and there’s also a selection of tools and special features for users to enjoy. For example, the calorie calculator tells users how many calories they burn on a morning boot camp or beach walk, and with the new health and fitness stats system users can record anything, from blood pressure to the time they spend in front of the games console, to monitor progress to personal goals.

There is also an ongoing football predictions competition with prizes to win. The second season of the English Premier League version is now up and running, and later in the year the hope is to have a version covering the Cayman Premier League too, Bonner said.

He noted that CaymanActive.com has also been forging links with other sports organisations on the island, including the Cayman Sports Authority and the government’s Department of Sports, which has recently launched its own sports website covering their ‘focus sports’ of athletics, basketball, cricket, football, netball and swimming.

Bonner said he is pleased to see these other websites promoting Cayman Sports. “Everything is going in the right direction. We are gathering momentum here and getting everyone active. The more that can be done to improve awareness of the huge diversity of sport and health opportunities we have, the better. If others can produce their own sites that fine, and if they can’t, then CaymanActive can help them by giving them free professional tools and all the support they need.”

Highlights from CaymanActive’s first year include providing the on-line registration facilities for the Cayman Island Olympic Committee’s Olympic Day 5k Run, and working alongside the Cayman Sports Authority to broadcast the Cayman World Cup of Football live across the Internet. That event really took Cayman global and was watched by a total of 23 different countries worldwide.

Bonner said, “We’ve only achieved what we have and come this far because of the great support and ideas we’ve had from CaymanActive members. There’s so much more to com,e too. After all, we’re only one year old. We’ve still got a lot of growing to do!”