Shutterbug captures Valley athletes

MAT-SU — If there’s a high school sporting event in the Mat-Su Valley, more often than not Bruce Eggleston is there snapping hundreds of photos.

Eggleston roams the sidelines with his Canon camera and telephoto lens. He’s not a newspaper photographer, although he’s been mistaken for one numerous times. Eggleston is the creator of and sole contributor to matsusports.net, a website that gives Valley sports fans access to thousands of action shots for no cost.

At any time, fans can hit Eggleston’s website, surf through thousands of photos from local football, basketball, hockey and volleyball games. Each of the Valley’s Class 4A schools are represented, as well as the Junior A Alaska Avalanche hockey team. If fans see photos they like, they can download them for free. If they want a print, that’ll cost a whole 28 cents for a 4x6 proof. Eggleston did not create the website to make money, he said. He simply wanted to contribute to his community.

“It feels good to do it for the kids,” Eggleston said. “Everybody would like to do some kind of community service type of thing. I found a niche I can fulfill.”

And that’s a big reason why Eggleston has spent so much of the last few months at local gymnasiums and ice rinks. Since the beginning of the football season, Eggleston has attended 142 high school games. That number includes varsity, junior varsity and C team games in a variety of different sports. He’s also one of the most loyal volunteers in the Alaska Avalanche junior hockey family. Eggleston runs the live Internet scoring during the games and hasn’t missed an Avalanche home game since the franchise settled in the Valley more than five years ago.

Other than obviously having a very understanding wife, Eggleston said he enjoys his role in the community.

“There’s nothing better to me than walking through the store and someone I wouldn’t know otherwise says hi to me,” said Eggleston, a Willow man who works full-time on Fort Richardson. “That’s something I wouldn’t have other than doing this.”

Eggleston sort of fell into a life as the Valley’s sports photographer when former Houston hockey coach Jamie Smith asked him to take pictures of the Hawks games. He had just purchased a new Canon camera and was trying it out.

“I said it sounds like fun, we’ll see what happens,” Eggleston said.

His son was also a freshman at Houston and a member of the boys’ basketball team.

“I couldn’t just do hockey,” Eggleston said.

Eggleston continued to shoot Houston sports for the next four years, before deciding to expand his coverage.

During a hockey game a few years ago, a player asked Eggleston to take a photo of him for his Myspace page, Eggleston said. That was one of the things that showed Eggleston that people were paying attention to his website.

“(The player) said anytime we play Houston, we go to your web page and see if there are pictures of us,” Eggleston said. “I thought it might be kind of fun to make it a Valley thing instead of a Houston thing.”

It’s been more than two years since Eggleston adjusted his depth of field to focus Valley wide, and he said he continues to get positive response as word continues to spread about his website.

“It hasn’t been anything but positive. A lot of the parents say thank you, a lot of the kids say thank you,” Eggleston said.

Every once in a while he’ll even get an e-mail, Facebook message or card in the mail saying thanks.

Eggleston said his original intention was to create somewhat of a picture repository and make it possible for any amateur photographer to add photos to his website. That is still possible, he said. Parents or fans can send him shots to post at any time. He’s still hopeful for more contributors in the future. But right now, Eggleston’s enjoys supplying local athletes, families and fans with as many photos as he can take.

See Eggleston’s website at matsusports.net.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bar tz at sports@frontiersman.com.