WAKE UP! ON ETBLITZ | It’s an ’80s Classic Saturday; G&Y / ETB Team of the Year announced on Sunday

EDITOR’S NOTE: You bored with breakfast? I’ve got a suggestion. Drop by Cozy Coffee Station and get one of these, a ham and cheddar croissant sandwich. Or maybe a blueberry lemon filled cream scone would be more of your thing. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. You don’t have to drive to, say, Allen to get this (even though you can get it there, too). Cozy Coffee Station is right here in East Texas (and in Allen). They’re in Kilgore, at 110 Midtown Plaza, and in Gilmer at 755 Highway 271 North. They’ve got both of the items I mentioned above, as well as sandwiches, literally hundreds of drinks… you know what? Check out the menu yourselves here on their site: Home | Cozy Coffee Station. Then drive as safely as possible, please, to one of the locations I just mentioned. And stay away from the chocolate donut holes. Those are all mine. All of ‘em.

World’s end

So the end of the 2024-25 school year is no longer “upon us,” it’s here. The 2024-25 school year is over, done and in the books, and we’d like to congratulate everyone, all the student athletes from our coverage area, all the cheerleaders, band, drill team, everyone who competed this past school year in an extracurricular activity. Without you, things are awful boring around here.

As hard as it is to believe, we’re coming up on the third school year of existence already for ETBlitz.com, and I just want to tell all of you THANK YOU, so much, for making us a part of your day, every single day.

In May alone:

• ETBlitz.com had 602,261 hits, our second-biggest month of 2025. February was our biggest, at 679,249.
• We had our biggest month for unique visitors: 18,993.

So far this year, the site has had almost 2.4 million hits, and 72,229 unique visitors. We’re on pace to far more than pass 2024 – in the entire year of ’24, ETBlitz had 3.25 million hits and 97,536 unique visitors. We’re likely to hit those marks by the start of football season in late August.

What’s been our biggest month ever, you ask? Well, you might not have. But I’ll tell you anyway. It was December, 2024, and just under 903,000 hits..

Obviously, it would be impossible to do that without readers. And we thank you so much.

No paywall

That’s the reason this site is cost-free. When we sat down with area business leaders to tell them our business model, they may have thought we were crazy: no subscription for this site, and no paywall for the readers. You can read ETBlitz.com anytime, all the time, for FREE. No article, no photos, are behind a paywall.

Very, very few other news outlets do that. And we understand why. Everybody has to make a living. We don’t begrudge them for that. But we choose to keep the site free for the viewer, for the reader, and simply sell advertising to make a living. It’s not easy, and we know sometimes the promotions are a drag. But we ask you to bear with us on that – without those promotions, there’s no ETBlitz.com.

We have great ad partners: Whataburger, Energy Weldfab, Kilgore-Gilmer Eye Care Centers, Goudarzi & Young, Clower Meats, Cozy Coffee Station, Zippy J’s Community Stores & Gateway Travel Centers, Wash Masters, ETX Electrical, and Denny’s. We’ve had others in the past who have been great, including National Wholesale Supply and Austin Bank.

These are names you guys trust, people that you know in all of our communities. They live here and work here, raise their families here just like you do. They’re not in Denton, or San Antonio like a lot of media companies that aren’t invested here.

What’s on the horizon

Of course, in a couple of months, the school year will start, and it’ll bring football, volleyball, cross country and fall tennis, which I’m vowing right now we are going to actually cover this year.

But in the immediate, a couple of items of note:

• The Goudarzi & Young, LLP / ETBlitz.com Team of the Year for the 2024-25 school year will be announced tomorrow, as in Sunday, June 8. All teams – all of them – from the ETB coverage area are eligible, which means teams from (in alphabetical order) Arp, Gilmer, Gladewater, Henderson, Kilgore, Kilgore College, Leverett’s Chapel, Overton, Sabine, Tatum, Troup, Wes Rusk, and White Oak. The results of our panel’s vote will be revealed in a story that will also reveal the runners-up, probably the top five vote-getters, and here’s wishing everyone good luck.
• The Whataburger / ETBlitz.com Players / Athletes of the Year for the 2024-25 school year will be announced Sunday, June 15. In similar fashion, our male and female athletes from those same athletic programs will be announced next Sunday. Our panel’s votes will list a male winner for the best athlete of the ’24-25 school year, and a female winner for the best athlete of the school year, then we’ll reveal the runners-up, at least the top five from each, if not more.
• Our coverage area is expanding. You read that correctly. I’m not going to spoil it here. But soon, ETBlitz.com is going to announce two programs – two high schools – that we’re adding to our coverage area. We are SUPER-DUPER excited to add these programs – can I say “super-duper” in 2025? When I tell you which programs they are, you’ll agree that it is that level. These are two schools with elite-level athletic programs that will be covered by ETB in the upcoming school year. Is that too much of a hint? We’ll reveal it this summer.
• Personality profiles return. We had a feature last year, the Whataburger / ETBlitz.com Personality Profile, during the summer when we had no players of the week to award, that was a pretty big hit. Among them: the stories we did on Hector and Laycen Peralez, and on Ronnie Hendrix and his son A.J. Hendrix. So, we’re bringing it back. This summer, we’ll have features on some people that make things happen in the ETB coverage area, but people you don’t hear from every day. We think you’ll love it – again.

‘80s Classic Saturday

With that, we’ve talked enough. It’s an ‘80s Classic Saturday on Wake Up!, and that means one thing… ‘80s music, man. And like it or not, the ‘80s would NOT have been the same without Madonna. (I know – I was living in ‘em. My mom couldn’t stand her). Here’s the song that put Madonna on the map.