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It started as a hobby so the town could follow the local high school basketball team.

Seven years later, CoachT.com is the most widely visited Internet site covering prep sports in the state.

"I remember the first time we had 1,000 hits in a day," longtime Lawrence County High School teacher and coach Jim Thompson said. "I called the family in there, and they said, `Oooh.'

"We'll hit a half-billion hits sometime this summer."

Launched in the fall of 1997, CoachT.com began as a way to keep Lawrenceburg up on the fortunes of the Lawrence County girls basketball team. Thompson's daughter, Brynn, was one of its players.

That spring, the Lady Wildcats won the Class AAA state championship. The following season, Thompson was approached by the district's other coaches to add the rest of the league to the site.

"I thought I'd just put (the Lady Wildcats) a page together, and that's all I thought it would ever be," Thompson said.

Internet giant Rivals.com soon came onboard, only to soon fold and leave Thompson's fledging site without funding and a means to continue. That's when webmaster Bradley Lambert, who'd met Thompson at the state tournament the previous season, got involved.

"The very day Rivals stopped, he (Lambert) called me and said, `The next time you want to do a Web site, I'm with you,"' Thompson said. "I said, `Let's get started."'

Starting up again in the fall of 2001, CoachT.com has grown to become an invaluable resource for both media and fans alike.

"During football season, I visit it several times a week," said Appalachian Therapy Center's Peggy Bratt, who doubles as trainer for Alcoa High School's sporting teams. "It's interesting to see what people think, see what's going around."

Bratt typically frequents the CoachT.com message boards, where fans from around the state engage in generally good-natured jousting over their teams.

The site also features a scoreboard, polls and team information, including schedules and rosters. Two years ago, Thompson added a prospects and signees database.

"I put the link on there for people to submit prospects," he said. "I didn't check it (for the first time) until two days later. I had 23,000 e-mails. I kept checking the box and it wouldn't open. It kept defaulting."

The marvel of Thompson's site lies in the sheer volume of information that can be found there. More to the point, it's how the information is obtained and policed that sets it apart.

"I had people in every town in our district call me after every game (the first year)," Thompson said. "People said, `Why don't you do this and why don't you do that?'

"I said, `If we're going to get that information, y'all are going to have to supply it."'

Little did he know how ready the state's coaches, parents and fans were to do just that.

The site, primarily e-mail driven, receives 2,000-4,000 hits to its message boards each day. It takes 30 gigabytes of memory -- the equivalent of more than 40 CDs -- to handle a day's operation.

"That's more than I used in a year three years ago," Thompson said.

During football season, Thompson said he'll spend eight hours a day on the site. Listening for "You've got mail" while relaxing in front of the television is now a whole new ball game, he said.

The site's photo archive now contains more than 25,000 photographs.

One of the funniest moments he's encountered running the site, Thompson said, was a call from a parent advising him how his staff could make it CoachT.com even better.

Thompson and Lambert, a webmaster for the Anderson County School System, are pretty much it in terms of staff.

After the phone call, an amused Thompson said he turned to his wife and said, "You're now staff."

"The TSSAA (and local statistician Earl Nall) helps a lot," Thompson added.

Policing the site presents the biggest challenge, he said. Profanity and other derogatory comments are not tolerated. Volunteer moderators help keep it all in check.

"I've probably banned about 7,000 people," Thompson said. "I've had two coaches call me and just give me a fit (about a message board entry). I said, `If you find something on there that you really feel is hurting high school football, we'll shut the thing down."'

The greatest deterrent to fans who go too far may lie on the courts and playing fields, though.

During last year's state championship run, several members of the Alcoa football team were the subject of scathing comments from a fan purporting to support powerhouse David Lipscomb.

The Mustangs had trounced the Tornadoes the year before in the semifinals.

A message board posting said of the Tornadoes: "The quarterback's not very good. The left side of the line is weak and the center is marginal."

"That fired (the Tornadoes) up pretty good," Bratt said.

Later that week, Alcoa defeated Lipscomb, 35-14, in Nashville en route to its sixth state crown.

Personal attacks are not a common thing on the site, Bratt said.

"Two or three posts, after he (Thompson) figured out what was going on, he shut it down," she said. "He does a pretty good job at that."