To all readers of the Kentucky Kernel sports section:

First, welcome to the new students on campus. We hope you will find that the Kernel is a valuable way to keep up with all of UK sports, both the immensely popular and the not-so-well-known club sports that inhabit this campus.

Second, I’d like to welcome all of the other students back to campus for another year in Lexington, and that welcome extends to those readers who are not students or faculty members at the University.

There is too much news to catch up on right now — we’ll spend the next couple days and weeks doing that. The sports world has been turned upside down apparently, what with UK football (yes, KENTUCKY), out-doing the powers that be of the football world to gain top flight commitments from two of the nation’s top quarterbacks, among other things.

This post is to tell you about all of the new ways you will be able to access sports news through the Kernel and how we hope that improves your experience as a Kernel reader.

With our new editor in chief Brad Luttrell, a self-described online junkie, taking the helm this year, we’ve jumped into the world of cyber-journalism. It’s a growing medium for journalism and one we hope to get started the right way.

This site is a perfect example. Here, you will be able to access up-to-date sports news from all of our writers, whether it’s the stories we publish in the paper each day or something that happened 10 seconds ago on campus, in a game or in a news conference. There won’t be anymore waiting for a columnist’s analysis on why Perry Stevenson elected to block a free throw attempt in the SEC Tournament; likewise, you’ll be able to receive instant updates from every sport from men’s basketball to ice hockey.

But there will be so much more.

We’ll be able to produce more mixed media this year — combining audio and video live from games, practices and news conferences. We’ll be able to provide you with more in-depth analysis than we could possibly fit into the newspaper each day. There will be a place for you to comment on stories, videos, blog posts and everything in between, and we hope that will provide a place for students and fans to come together to discuss UK sports — and to tell us where we need to improve (please, keep it clean).

UK has a promising group of teams this season, from a football team trying to build on recent success to a volleyball team hoping to win the SEC; from a men’s basketball team trying to keep moving in the right direction to a women’s basketball team planning on going to the Big Dance.

Likewise, we have big expectations here. This is new to us, but we hope it serves as a better way for us to get the news you want to you in a faster, easier and more complete manner.

Good luck as school begins, and don’t forget to check out the Kernel and our new web site that first week. With seasons beginning, we’ve packed the first few editions of the paper with plenty of great news, and there will be even more on this site.

Until next time.