A former Charger football player runs the Charger Football fan site, Chargerblue.com, as a “passion project.”
Andy Losik ’94 has been singlehandedly posting links to information about the Chargers, as well as his own coverage of games, since 1998, according to the site.
“I couldn’t stop if I wanted to now,” Losik said, which is good because the site has a devoted following. Its supplementary Twitter account has 626 followers.
“I think our guys check that as frequently as any site about Division II football,” Nate Shreffler said of the team. Shreffler is the Charger’s offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, and played Charger football with Losik.
“It’s a source of information for everyone involved in the program, from kids up through parents and fans,” Shreffler said.
The team even steers recruits to the site, Shreffler said.
Losik is not only a devoted Chargers fan— “You’re not gonna find a guy who bleeds more Charger Blue than Andy,” Shreffler said— but also an elementary infotech teacher in the Hamilton Community School District in Michigan. He uses the skills he develops working on the site to better teach his students. He can experiment with new techniques on Chargerblue.com without affecting his students, he said.
Losik started the website to curate what little Division II football information was available on the web at the time. He had always been interested in sportswriting, but when he attended Hillsdale, there was no journalism program. The site was a way for him to contribute to the school.
“As an elementary teacher I don’t have a lot of disposable income I can donate to the college, but I do find a lot of time,” he said.
As time went on, he kept up with the latest technology. When he started the site he had to program everything manually in HTML. Now he can update the site from his phone using Google’s Blogger, he said.
In the summer of 2007, he started a Chargerblue.com store on CafePress, selling custom Charger football merchandise. He uses the revenue from the store to pay for bandwidth and to buy merchandise for himself and his family. One year he donated a season’s worth of profits to the family of a recently-graduated Charger football player whose mother was very ill.
Losik said he appreciates that the college has allowed him to use their logos on the merchandise he sells.
“They’ve been very agreeable,” he said. “Other schools would not be so agreeable.”
Losik also said he appreciates the education he received at Hillsdale, which has equipped him well to handle changing technology.
“Hillsdale taught me how to learn,” Losik said.” That’s the most important thing.”