Submitting Results 101

 

First Thing's First... Hand Times

One message that I want to be sure everyone reads is about hand times. In track & field it is considered standard that if you report times to the hundredth of a second you are indicating that you had a fully-automated timing system to record this performance. PLEASE if you are using hand timers do not report what the watch actually said! Please round what the watch says up to the next tenth of a second. So if your hand timer records a 10.73 100 meter dash, please record that time as 10.8.

I could get into why hand timing is not accurate and all the factors, but it's not necessary here. Hand timing cannot possibly be that accurate and 99.9% of the time will record times considerably faster than they actually were. So please round up and only report to the tenth.

I don't have ESP

If the results are not emailed to me, I have no way of knowing about them or publishing them in the rankings. I do not have time to go and contact every meet director in the state to chase down results. So it's up to you!

If you're a meet director please email the results to me at jparks@milesplit.us . If you're a runner/coach/parent please let the meet director of the meets you attend know that it is important to you and your team that the results get sent into MileSplit.us. If they don't send them ask them, beg them, nag them until they do. And if they still don't send them in then maybe you should make a statement to them by not attending their meet next year.

In my opinion, and I think it is a growing opinion among most in the state, the meet director's job is not done until they have published results. And through lots of hard work and dedication over the years, I think it's safe to say publish those results on MileSplit.us! This site is no doubt the first place people are going to look for them including parents, fans, coaches, runners, grandmas, and college recruiters. Please get them sent in.

Using Hytek or RaceTab

As you probably know by now, we are going to input EVERY time into the performance database for meets reported to us in Hytek or RaceTab format. In the past we have only recorded the “elite performances” which left about 97% of the kids out. Now everyone is put into the rankings, team records, and has an athlete profile! It's fantastic!

BUT the times have to be sent to be in Hytek or RaceTab format. That's because otherwise I have to enter these performances one by one. J. Byrne has written software that is smart and can understand Hytek/RaceTab results which makes it much easier to get these put in.

If you use Hytek, please export and send the results in Flat HTML format. That is an option from the Hytek Reports menu. Please don't print and scan the results--that does no good! Nor do PDFs! Here is a tutorial on that from our Virginia sister site.

But what if you don't have Hytek? That's what J. Byrne wrote RaceTab for. RaceTab is available at http://racetab.milesplit.com. If you're running a meet it is FREE. This is not a sales pitch! He wrote the software to be cheap, flexible, and easy... yet powerful. You can use it as a full-fledged meet manager or just run the meet like you always do and just use it to type in the results in an Excel-like format afterwards. It's no harder than typing into a spreadsheet in that mode... actually it's easier because it can remember what you've typed before and do auto-complete and also calculate the team scores for you.

Put in First Names

It's very important also that we get first names. Since are adding everyone now it can quickly become a huge mess if we just start entering in athletes with only a last name... think of all the “Smith” and “Williams” we'd have! So to help us match up the athletes correctly, not create duplicates, distinguish siblings, etc. please please type in first names as well. As a policy, unless I can somehow easily identify who the athlete is by last name only (if they're already in the system), I will skip the performance and athlete if it's only a last name.

But all that typing!!!

It can be, but is typing really that much harder than writing it down on paper? Once you get familiar with these meet management programs you'll wonder how you did without. And there are increasingly more ways to eliminate that typing of all the names by getting coaches to send in their rosters. RaceTab, for example, can import rosters submitted on a spreadsheet and also has the auto-complete features I mentioned earlier. It will format the results, tally the team scores, etc.

Online registration systems also make it very easy and are increasingly more readily available with a lower learning curve and cheaper prices. More on that coming in the future.

If you're already typing it up

In closing, if you are one of those who already type up the results and send them into us. First of all, THANK YOU. But if you are one of the many who will type them into Excel or Word or some other program... please consider using RaceTab to type them in instead. You're already doing all the work. Use RaceTab and it will format it prettier, add the team scores up, and make it easy for you to send it to me in the format that I need to add in ALL of the athlete's performances. Your Word and Excel formats will only allow me to recognize the elites.

Thanks for reading if you made it down this far!!!