It’s beginning to get as easy as 1-2-3.

Somewhere in the Internet lies an opportunity for high school athletes and coaches, as well as at the collegiate level, to get what they want for their teams.

Social networking sites have grown in popularity over the last 10 years and are now being used for more than just posting pictures and keeping up with friends.

Hang on, I’m going to post something to Twitter real quick: “Writing column on how athletes can benefit from the Internet and social networking sites.”

While Facebook and MySpace have become some of the most popular places to post pics, videos and enter information, they have become better and easier to use, and even something like YouTube has been brought into the scouting and recruiting world of high school sports.

Don’t believe it’s becoming that simple? Try this one on for size:

Much like you or I can create an account on YouTube and post funny video blogs or recordings of our friends, athletes can now create a profile and upload highlight reels for college recruiters to see on gametapetube.com. One local high school athlete is already taking full advantage of the site as he prepares for his senior season at Lubbock High.

Go to the site and see if you can locate a video from the username slaughter_1. Yup, it’s Westerner wide receiver Nathan Slaughter’s own video of great catches and displays of his route-running and athleticism. Just 15 days on the Web and he had already generated more than 117 views of his video that he uploaded to the Web site’s server.

And he even took it a step further. In the information line below the video you can see his 40-yard time and vertical as well as his GPA, SAT and ACT scores — and they are quite impressive — giving coaches another idea of just how good of an all-round student-athlete they may be able to get in the 5-foot-8 receiver.

Even Roosevelt head coach Greg Poynor is amazed at how high school players can help boost their chances of being discovered nowadays.

“I think it’s unbelievable,” Poynor said. “A lot of that the kids can do themselves now. For the high school kids, that stuff is so easy. They love doing it and putting the videos on themselves and all it’s doing is helping to get themselves out there for these colleges to see.”

Poynor ran into a similar situation when linebacker Dylan Adams was searching for the opportunity to play in college after his senior season at Roosevelt in 2008.

He used an e-recruiting Web site to enter stats and get coaches to comment and grade what they saw in him to help college recruiters find him as an attractive addition to their program.

And it worked.

As we push the lines of using the Internet for more than just entertainment, it’s allowing coaches to find ways to use it as an extra digital scout.

Web sites like MaxPreps.com and THSCA.com (Texas High School Coaches Association) allow coaches to submit statistics, game box scores, videos and profile information into Web pages set up for them to use and be seen by other coaches, media and players’ parents.

And although it seems like most coaches may not want to use the site to expose what others may not know about them, eventually somewhere they find the information they need to get the extra edge or find the right player for their program.

Muleshoe head coach David Wood said he and his coaching staff are always looking for an extra advantage.

“We try to find as much stuff as possible on teams,” Wood said. “It’s kind of like when we were getting ready to face Bushland last year. They had a kid at running back and they didn’t use him hardly at all during the first half of the season, but during the second half of the season they doubled his amount of carries. So we realized he was just beginning to come into his own.

“Sure enough, there he was in the playoff game against us as their premier running back. We wouldn’t have known that had we just looked at his overall stats. But when we went into a site and looked at his game-by-game stats we saw that he was beginning to be more productive as the season went on.”

Southland sophomore quarterback Travis Arguello is thinking about using his Facebook and MySpace pages in a similar manner, which can really help a 6-foot-3, 190-pound quarterback get notcied at a small six-man school.

“I mostly just use it to keep up with friends and other people,” he said. “I’ve thought about posting some videos and other things on there that could maybe help me be recruited. You never know.”