What does it do? When I was at Cornell, typing in entries off of fax machines was very time consuming. Weldon designed our own online entry system with hardly any programming knowledge.
It seems to me that this service should cost hardly anything.
I remember thinking tfrrs/directathletics must be making a killing.
Does it really help that they have everyone's pb?
Should I get our programmer who is full time to develop our own system? I imagine it must be much more complex than it seems.
Yes it is going up but there are A LOT of features for that prices. Entries done on a.net can be downloaded directly into their RunMeet program. Other features include live field event results, scratch athletes during the meet, among many others.
I think it'd be cool to set up your own system. Just having an entry system probably isn't difficult, but I imagine a big part of it is that they do live results and a lot of record keeping. I will say, I almost always use Athletic.net instead of Milesplit because they have the top 50 HS/college rankings free in every state and every event, and everyone's races as opposed to just their PRs.
If you do that, I'd like to see some sort of rankings too. Especially during indoors, there's a ton of racing every weekend. It'd be cool to see rankings of the top HS/college kids here.
I think it'd be cool to set up your own system. Just having an entry system probably isn't difficult, but I imagine a big part of it is that they do live results and a lot of record keeping. I will say, I almost always use Athletic.net instead of Milesplit because they have the top 50 HS/college rankings free in every state and every event, and everyone's races as opposed to just their PRs.
If you do that, I'd like to see some sort of rankings too. Especially during indoors, there's a ton of racing every weekend. It'd be cool to see rankings of the top HS/college kids here.
Concur. I feel like part of the thing that defines alot of modern running news media outlets are the rankings they put out over the course of the season. Milesplit, Flotrack, Citius, and then places like athletic.net. I think it would be nice to see letsrun with that too.
Learned to never look at Athletic.net for rankings. Both my daughters don't show up in the Top 10 of their events, but of course on MileSplit they are there as MileSplit is more comprehensive. Go ahead and compare Top 25 any event from AN to MS and you'll notice AN only has 20% of the performances.
I no longer coach for schools so not sure the value-add, but am sure an Athletic Department would be paying for this and not the average Joe.
Athletic.net will be charging $405/year to make coaches do all their work for them. Their timing company meanwhile is snatching meets from timers on the west coast. To make matters worse, they then turn around and try to sell us the tools that they made with the money they got from the meets they snatched. In conclusion, we take your clients from you, turn around and try to sell the products that we were able to make from taking your business, and then use the data from every other timed meet to make a database where they can charge schools 400+ a year. Wonder what their relationship with Nike is :)
I was a sub elite HSer. During my senior year, I'd typically be top 10 or top 5 in big XC meets, and 1st-3rd on the track depending on the event.
If you're near the front, Milesplit is actually worth the money. For example, our league's indoor track championship (8 teams) was held outdoors due to weather, and I downloaded about 200+ good photos of our 4x8 and 3200. Similarly, they'd have great photos from XC - but they were really good for the first 10-15 or so people (near the front - maybe in a tiny pack, but more spread out) rather than the clumps of people coming through around 18 flat pace.
Their rankings were fine but not great, but they were still useful for meets where I didn't know much about my opponents. I'd be able to look at people who broke 16 or were just above that, and check their track PRs. I knew the fast people in my league and in my state, but I didn't really know the strength of people from neighboring states. Of course, it's not perfect, but it's still a good way to see who I'd be competing against. I can elaborate more if anyone wants to hear.
Athletic.net will be charging $405/year to make coaches do all their work for them. Their timing company meanwhile is snatching meets from timers on the west coast. To make matters worse, they then turn around and try to sell us the tools that they made with the money they got from the meets they snatched. In conclusion, we take your clients from you, turn around and try to sell the products that we were able to make from taking your business, and then use the data from every other timed meet to make a database where they can charge schools 400+ a year. Wonder what their relationship with Nike is :)
Athletic.net and Milesplit are two sides of the same coin.
I've said it before on here and I'll say it again...Us high school coaches, meet directors and state associations should not be handing over our meet data willingly to these private companies. Now they own the data and they can charge us whatever they want to view it.
We should be screaming from the rooftops for an open platform where meet entries and results data and reporting is freely accessible. Maybe TFRRS could be that platform for us, I don't know. If companies like Athletic.net and Milesplit want to charge for their articles, analysis and videos the more power to them, but leave our high school meet results and rankings out of it.
MileSplit and Athletic.net don't own the data. They've just put effort into aggregating all of it, adding different filters, etc. No different than a box score of an NBA game. I don't have a problem with these companies making money but I don't really appreciate the charitable marketing tactic of "site supporter". A conglomerate that has a deal with the sport's governing body and is getting Nike money should be above cyber-panhandling.
Athletic.net will be charging $405/year to make coaches do all their work for them. Their timing company meanwhile is snatching meets from timers on the west coast. To make matters worse, they then turn around and try to sell us the tools that they made with the money they got from the meets they snatched. In conclusion, we take your clients from you, turn around and try to sell the products that we were able to make from taking your business, and then use the data from every other timed meet to make a database where they can charge schools 400+ a year. Wonder what their relationship with Nike is :)
Athletic.net and Milesplit are two sides of the same coin.
I've said it before on here and I'll say it again...Us high school coaches, meet directors and state associations should not be handing over our meet data willingly to these private companies. Now they own the data and they can charge us whatever they want to view it.
We should be screaming from the rooftops for an open platform where meet entries and results data and reporting is freely accessible. Maybe TFRRS could be that platform for us, I don't know. If companies like Athletic.net and Milesplit want to charge for their articles, analysis and videos the more power to them, but leave our high school meet results and rankings out of it.