A Cookbook for Dual Swim Meet Computer Operations
Revised June 2003
David DeWitt
238-5936 (home), 263-5489 (work)
1. Introduction
This document describes how to setup and run a dual meet using the Windows Version of the Meet Manager (MM) program. If you have questions or find mistakes in either the sample meet I have provided or with this document, please contact me.
Please note that all dual meets are to be run as “Timed Final” meets. This means that swimmers may score from ANY heat, not just the final heat.
2. Timing System
This document assumes that you will be using watches to time events and not a timing system.
3. Computer and Printer Setup
Most teams use two printers while running a dual meet: one to print result labels and one to produce result sheets. If at all possible you should avoid using an A/B switch to connect the two printers to the computer. Inevitably, in the pressure of running a meet, the switch will get set incorrectly, wasting labels and significantly increasing the stress level. If neither printer has a USB connection, I would suggest purchasing a USB-to-Parallel converter cable. These cost about $60 and will enable you to attach one of your printers to your primary computer’s parallel port and the second printer to one of it’s USB ports.
4. Pool Customization – Do this exactly once
First you will need a copy of Meet Manager (MM). After you install MM from the CD you should download the free updates from the Hytek web site (www.hy-tekltd.com). As of June 2003, the current version available from Hytex is 1.4Lff. It is VERY important that you bring the program up to date. You should do the same for Team Manager whose current version is 3.0Ca. Once the updates have been downloaded they should be installed. Under the File menu of MM, there is a menu item called Install Update. Selecting this menu item will bring up a screen that will allow you to navigate to the update file you downloaded from the Hy-Tek website. Then just follow the on-screen instructions to install the new update. Team Manager gets updated in a similar fashion.
On the All City Web Site you will find a Meet Manager database file named CityDualMeet at the URL ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/users/dewitt/CityDualMeet.mdb. Download this file to an appropriate folder on your hard drive (e.g. 2003Meets). Next perform the steps describe below to customize this file for your pool.
1) Start MM and open the CityDualMeet database. This will cause the following screen to be displayed:
2) Under the Set-up menu, select Meet Set-up. This will cause the following screen to be displayed. Adjust the Pool Size and Course (length of pool) appropriately and then click OK. Leave Meet Name, Location, and Date alone for the time being. You will set these when you get ready to run your first meet.
3) Next, under Set-up, select Athlete/Relay Preferences which will cauase the following screen to be displayed. Make sure that the Date for Computing Ages is set properly.
4) Under Set-up, select the Report menu item and then the Printer tab. Specify the printers to be used for reports and labels. Unfortunately, you must leave the box “number of entries to printer” set to 1. Otherwise the program prints multiple copies of the result labels as well as the meet results!
5) Under Set-Up, review Entry/Scoring Preferences and Scoring Setup. These are set correctly for the 2001 season which will used a timed final format for the first time.
6) Next select the Events menu. This will cause the following screen to be displayed.
Under the Events Menu the only thing you need to do is to import your team and pool records. If you already have the Pool Records in MM do the following sequence of operations. Otherwise, skip to the following paragraph. First use MM to open the MM database containing your team and pool records and export[1] them to two files (keeping track of the name and location of each file). Close that database and reopen the CityDualMeet database. Select Events and then Records which will bring up the screen shown below. Import the pool records by selecting the Import button at the top left. Repeat this process for the team records.
If you do not have the pool records in a MM database, you will need to enter the record for each event manually (painful and tedious). Start by creating tags for team and pool records by clicking Add Tag (e.g. SW-Pool and SW-Team). For each event, click in the Time field and enter the team record for the event. Tab over to Year and enter the year. Then tab to Record Holder. For relays, enter the team name in this field and then the swimmer names under Relay Names. For individual events, enter the record holder and their team name. While you would think that the team named should be entered under the Affiliation, when you do this the team names do not get printed in the heat sheets. Repeat this process for the pool records
Click Close to return to the Events menu and then click Close again to return to the Main Meet Manager Screen. Under the File menu, select Exit
7) At
this point you are done with the initial set up and will left with a customized
version of the MM database “CityDualMeet” for your pool.
5. Meet Setup for a Dual Meet
5.1 Initial Setup
To run your first meet, begin by making a copy of the MM database file “CityDualMeet” that you customized above. To make a copy, right click the CityDualMeet file (i.e. using the right mouse botton) and select Copy. Give the copy an appropriate name (e.g. MBatSW). Then start Meet Manager and use the Open command under the File menu to appropriate the file (MBatSW). You need to explicitly open the correct file as, by default, MM, starts by opening the previous meet you had open (in this case probably CityDualMeet). Once you have the correct meet opened, select Meet Set-up under the Set-up menu and give the meet the proper name (e.g. Maple Bluff at Shorewood) and fill in the date and location of the meet. Then, under the Set-up menu, select Seeding Preferences. This will cause the following screen to be displayed. On this screen under “2 Team Dual Meets”, select a team for the even lanes and a Team for the Odd Lanes. All City Rules require that the “home” team swim in the Odd lanes. Finally, click OK.
If the visiting team is not in the pull down menu, click Cancel and select the Teams menu to add the team. A word of caution. Sometimes teams change their abbreviations and/or long or short names. If you have problems seeding a meet with entries from the visiting team, check on what name and abbreviation they used as the abbreviations must match.
5.2
Accepting Meet Entries
This is really easy to do. After the visiting team brings you its entries on a floppy, select the top level File Menu in MM. On this menu select Import and then select Entries. The default is to look for a “.cl2” file of entries on the A: drive (i.e. the floppy drive). Another approach is to first copy the entries from the floppy to a folder on your hard drive, renaming the file appropriately (e.g. MB.cl2). This gives you a permanent copy of the entries in case a dispute arises. At the start of the import process you will be prompted with a form. Make sure that you select the Match on Event Numbers check box. As entries are processed, the program looks for swimmers swimming in too many events (more than 2 individual and 2 relays) or simply incorrect entries (e.g. a boy entered in a girls event). If exceptions occur during the import process you will be notified and given the opportunity to print out an exception report. Some exceptions (like a relay-only swimmer) are harmless and can be ignored.
Repeat this process for your own team’s entries.
5.3 Seeding
Once you have imported the entries for both teams you are ready to seed the meet. Select the Seeding menu from the top level of MM. This will cause the following menu to be displayed. Select session 1 by clicking on the session number Then click the Select All button on the left side of the screen followed by the Start Seeding button. Once you are done seeding, click Close to return to the main menu.
5.4 Heat Sheets
You are now
ready to produce heat sheets for the meet. Go to the Reports
menu and select Meet Program. This will cause the following
form to be displayed.
While there are a variety of different heat sheet formats, we use the
options shown below. Once
you have selected the desired options, you are ready to produce the heat
sheets. Select session #1, then
click Select All (which will cause all events in the
session to be selected), and then Create Report.
5.5 Lane Timer Sheets
At this point you should also produce lane timer sheets. To do this go to the Reports menu and select Lane/Timer Sheets. The following options will put two events per page of paper and will produce all the timer sheets for lane 1, then lane 2, etc. Once you have the desired options specified, click Select All (which will cause all events in the Session to be selected). Finally, select Create Report.
This format prints all the timer sheets for lane 1, followed by lane 2, etc. It also puts two events per page of paper to minimize wasted paper. This unfortunately means that each of the sheets must be cut in half. This will leave you two piles of paper for each lane: one with the odd events and one with the even events. You need to merge the two piles to get the events in order. The sheets for each lane should then be placed on a clipboard for the timers.
5.6 Backing Up the Meet
At this point, you should back up the meet onto a floppy (better yet a USB or Zip drive). Personally, I believe that floppies are a VERY bad media for important backups. They can and do fail – even brand new disks. To create a backup from the File menu of MM select Backup. This will display a form that allows you to select a backup volume and folder as well as a name for the backup file.
6. Running the Meet
Start MM, open the MM database file for the meet, and then select Run. The first thing to do is to select the Preferences menu and check that each of the options for Results, Award Labels, Backup Times, and Report Preferences are set correctly. For some reason even if you think you have set these values properly using the top-level Set-up menu, the values sometimes do not get set properly when you go to run the meet. Hopefully, these problems will get fixed in a future release of MM.
Under Preferences/Results, select the options shown below and then click Close:
Under Preferences/Award Labels, select the options appropriate for the type of award labels you will be using and then click Close: Note that the following set of preferences will send the award labels directly to the printer being used to print award labels.
Next select the Session button at left end of the set of buttons in the center of the screen. This will bring up the following screen. Select session 1 under Session # and then click OK.
After selecting a session you will be presented with a list of events as shown below (this screen is actually from a completed event with 3 heats).
Select the first event in the session by clicking on the desired event number or name. This will bring up a list of heats at the middle of the screen on the right (in the screen shown above heat 1 of 3 heats of event 14 has been selected). Select the first heat by clicking on the heat number. This will bring up a list of swimmers in the first heat. After the event has been completed and Scoring has provided you with the results for the event (averaged watch times plus DQs and finish orders from the meet officials), enter each swimmers time in the Finals Time column. For DQ’d swimmers click the appropriate DQ check box. If the finish order for a heat is to be determined by a JD (judges decision), select JD in the middle of the screen to manually specifiy the result order.
Scratches or “no shows” are handled as follows. Instead of entering the time for a swimmer, double click on the swimmers name which will bring up the following screen. Click Yes.
Once you have processed all the heats in an event, you are now ready to score the event and to produce a listing of the results for posting and announcing. Start by clicking the Score button in the center of the screen. This will produce an ordered list of swimmers from fastest to slowest. In the center of the screen at the top are three icons the left-most of which looks like a printer. Clicking this icon will result in a print menu. Adjust the number of copies as desired and click OK.
If you get tired of this approach, you can print 4 copies directly to the printer. To do this from the Run menu, select Preferences and then Report Preferences. This will bring up the following screen. Set the number of copies to 4 and click Print Directly to Printer
The last step is to produce the award labels for the event. Simply click Awards in the center of the screen and the award labels will be sent directly to the label printer.
When you have finished with the current event, click the Next Event button in the middle of the screen to move to the next event.
4.3 Deck
Seeds
Sometimes before a meet (or even during a meet) you will find that you will need to deck seed an individual swimmer (or even a whole relay). Start by selecting Run and then select the desired Event # (if you have to do this in the middle of the meet you can skip these two steps. Assume that you need to add a swimmer to heat 1 of event 15.
Select the Adjust button which will bring up the following screen.
Then select Show Eligible Athletes which will bring up the following screen. The highlighted swimmers are ones already entered in the event.
To seed Anna Dittman in Lane 2 of Heat 1, simply click her name in the lower window and while continuing to hold the mouse button down drag her name (a little fish will appear for the cursor) to the proper heat and lane. This should give you the following screen. Then click Accept followed by Close which will take you back to the Run menu.
If you are really unlucky the swimmer you need to seed will not even be in the meet. Click the Athlete Menu button which will bring up the following screen. Click Add Athletes which will bring up a form in which you can enter the athlete. Don’t worry about getting the swimmers birthdate exactly right. Just make up a date so that the swimmer belongs to the correct age group. Don’t forget to indicate swimmer’s team. Once you have finished adding the athlete you can resume the process described about to enter the athlete into the proper events and heats.
If you are doing this process before the meet starts you should also fix all the effected lane timer sheets so that the timers do not get any more confused than they normally are.
7. Final Reports
After the final event has been processed you unfortunately still have some work to do. Start by exiting the Run screen by clicking the Close at the top left corner.
7.1 Team Scores
To produce a listing of team scores select Reports from the main MM menu and then Scores. On the resulting form (shown below) select Select All and then set the other options as indicated below. Finally, click Create Report. Print this report in the normal fashion.
7.2
Producing a Results file for the Visiting Team
To produce a disk with the results for the visiting team (and also one for you to import back into Team Manager), select Export under the top-level File menu and then Results for Team Manager. The subsequent sequence of menus will guide you through the process of producing the CommLink output file (of type .CL2) for both the visiting team and yourself.
7.2 Updating Pool and Team Records
From the top-level meet manager menu, select Events and then Records. Select one of the tags (Pool or Team) and then click Update. Repeat this process for the other tag. When updating the Team records make sure that a swimmer from the visiting team is not accidentally given credit for a new team record for your team. To prevent this from happening remove the check box for that event.
7.3 Getting Ready for the Next Home Meet
After updating the team and pool records, the last thing to do is to create a skeleton meet for your next home meet. Exit Meet Manager and make a copy of the meet manager database file just as you would any Windows file (right-click the icon for the file and then select Copy). Rename the file appropriately with the name of the next home meet (e.g. SEMatSW). Then start Meet Manager and open the copy (e.g. SEMatSW) you made (needless to say, make sure you open the correct file).
From the File menu select Purge. Of the options provided, select Remove Data Selectively which will bring up the form shown below. Choose the options shown below and then click OK. Exit Meet Manager. You are all done!
