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SportsDivasInc.com: A Website Catering to Chicago's Female Sports Fans

By Justin Breen | January 7, 2013 6:22am | Updated on January 8, 2013 10:05am

SOUTH LOOP — Women looking for water cooler essentials for Monday night's BCS Championship Game have a new online outlet — SportsDivasInc.com.

And information on the Notre Dame-Alabama tilt is customized just for them.

An article about the big game was written by 2004 Notre Dame graduate Joan Williams, a Gold Coast resident who's one of 13 women scribing for SportsDivasInc.com.

Williams, a resident physician in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, was a trainer for the Fighting Irish football team for three years. The 31-year-old said she's a football expert, but reading other articles on the website helped her learn about unfamiliar sports.

"This gives you a way to catch up on things," Williams said. "It's a great website for people who know a little bit about sports but don't know the fine details."

The site was launched last April by Monica Murphy Vargas, who runs SportsDivasInc.com out of her family's 15th-floor South Loop condominium overlooking the museum complex, Grant Park and Lake Michigan.

Vargas, a former senior account executive at ESPN, said a website catering to potential female fans is the "last frontier when it comes to sports."

"I've been able to convert plenty of women to sports fans," Vargas said. "We want to be covering everything that's buzzworthy, and the site is really Chicago-specific."

The site, which Vargas said is attracting about 17,000 page views per month, features only exclusive content. The articles range from game previews to fashion tips.

Vargas, 36, said popular portions of the site include "Gossip," where readers discovered White Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham was engaged, and a weekly H.A.M. (Hot Available Man), which showcases single professional athletes in the Chicago area.

"The athletes we feature really get a kick out of it," said Victoria Kendzierski, the site's head of communications and an Old Town resident. "The great thing about the H.A.M. is it's featuring a good-looking athlete, but it's also telling our readers interesting things about their background."

Vargas said the site also has sponsored events teaching women how to play Fantasy Football.

SportsDivasInc.com also has built partnerships with all of Chicago's male pro sports teams, and it soon will be branching out into women's professional sports in the Windy City, Vargas said.

"I'm kind of going out into the wild and learning as I go," she said. "We're trying to tap into a culture that hasn't been tapped into correctly yet."