Timing at High School meets

Don't take your team to meets run like that.

at least they are not timing by lanes - went to a meet last week and our kid won a very close 100m dash and ended up in 4th place due to a poor timer in his lane - they weren't even worrying about places at all. no amount of explanation seemed to work.

Maybe if you ran the 1 Mile and 2 Mile, instead of those stupid 1600s and 3200s, you get more respect.

That's just lazy. Part of your entry fees pays the timing contractor. If the meet director refuses to have the timer use FAT for everybody, you should request a reduced entry fee for each distance runner.

Check this out. A high school regional meet that was hand-timed and held on a 340m 5 lane track.

I time 10-15 meets a year with a finishlynx FAT system and I think I know why they don't bother with the distances. Though absurd, it takes much more time to actually analyze the image for distance runs with 10-25 kids in the race. It sounds like they don't want to take the time to do this, so they take the image, have someone use one watch for timing, and then just read off the hip numbers in order. I can usually analyze a distance race of 20-25 runners in about 2-3 minutes, so it sounds as if they're just lazy. Tenths and hundredths are just as important to the distance runners as they are the sprinters.....unless you think like a sprinter.

Btw...I was a sprinter! ;)