XC Club Nats results

HardLoper wrote:

xenonscreams wrote:

I recomputed the women's team scores using the new results and got the same top ten, so hopefully the same can be said for the men's. It almost made a difference for the 6th - 7th matchup - I had NB Boston and HTS Elite as a tie, with the sixth runner now making a difference, but NB Boston still comes out on top.

Contrary to popular belief that's not how you break ties in XC

http://www.usatf.org/Events---Calendar/2014/USATF-National-Club-Cross-Country-Championships/Athlete-Info/Team-Scoring.aspx

Oh weird/neat. Might make a difference then, someone should check

For what it is worth - the timer was and is completely competent - this falls on usatf, not the loc, not the timer.

Just noticed they have the 'final' results for individuals plus the AG breakdown in the masters group.

No team scores yet for any of the 4 divisions.

Yep, update in the middle of day 4: Unofficial results page is gone. Official results page has taken down links to the old open results that included team scores (they can still be accessed however, I posted the links earlier in the thread). Official results page now has individual results from all races, including master's age group results, but no listing of team points scored in any of these races or team results from any race.

Presumably anyone with some patience could go through these results at this point by hand and determine team scores (and maybe that is what someone is doing at this moment).

For this meet, is the timing company also doing the scoring, or did they simply provide a clock and a list of finishers to USATF? For all those blaming USATF (which I agree has plenty of issues), I think the problem rests with whoever is contracted to score the meet.

I can understand why the masters races can be difficult to score. You have several age groups, but the teams may not correspond to those age groups. If you have one stud 50 year old but no senior team, you might score him as part of your masters team. So he's in the 50-54 age group results, but he'd be in the 40-49 team results. Throw in unattached runners for different age groups and it will be a pain to sort out.

BUT, this just shows poor preparation on the part of the timers/scorers. It's all about setting attributes correctly before the gun goes off. Declarations had to be made prior to the meet, so there shouldn't be any surprises after the fact.

...in addition to what you said, you also have non americans in the masters events

and probably one team or another didn't go through uniform check or didn't all have the same uniforms. Is that really a DQ or just a formality?

it's massively complicated - I can see how hard it is to score that race

I coach a Pacific Association USATF club, but we didn't bring full teams to nationals this year. Am not a fan of USATF or its policies (or their timing service which was way too slow with the aggregate results). I also think they should be well-prepared for this sort of eventuality.

Still, in this case, to resolve scoring snafus, teams should be required to submit a score sheet. In our association that takes a couple of days to assess and tally up the scores. (It doesn't excuse the slow or inaccurate posting of unofficial results).

This is helpful for 1. internally identifying masters/seniors runners to be scored, and 2. At nationals I suspect a few listed "B" team runner blew up and beat some of their "A" team runners, creating more confusion in scoring. That may need to be accounted for as well.

In our association PA-USATF we submit the score sheet and the coach (or designated club officer) will scores their runners as they see fit after internal discussion with club members. For example, in masters races, we might drop down a fast senior - or perhaps we won't and we'll just chase the seniors points instead. The association cannot presume whom each club wishes to score.

This is a drop down from our association's "submit a score sheet" link.

http://www.pausatf.org/data/ScoreSheet.php

I really believe USATF could learn a LOT from its better run associations.

Agree with the complexity of scoring this event. However, considering there wasn't any race-day registration and the teams were declared BEFORE the event, everything was known beforehand and it should really be a slam-dunk to score the meet.The rules are the same every year, no? Why isn't there a 'runbook' that the LOC gets that can be used to help manage the meet?

terranov wrote:

...in addition to what you said, you also have non americans in the masters events

and probably one team or another didn't go through uniform check or didn't all have the same uniforms. Is that really a DQ or just a formality?

it's massively complicated - I can see how hard it is to score that race

this is what i KNOW:

the USATF did not close entries when they were supposed to (if you know someone....they'll let you in, etc)

the USATF did not communicate their requirements clearly to the timing company, and were entering people as late as the 12th...after chips and numbers had been assigned.

the information from registration was also note coded correctly for their own scoring purposes..totally on usatf.

this is not the first time you have had to wait DAYS to see results on their page.

And that's why you have deadlines for big meets like this.

Scoring the meet is simple...IF everything is entered/coded correctly beforehand. If you're accepting entries after teams have already been declared and bibs assigned, no wonder there are issues.

Was it USATF or the LOC signing people up the day before the meet?

I want to make a club team called "Unattached" now.

debaser27 wrote:

the information from registration was also note coded correctly for their own scoring purposes..totally on usatf.

As I explained earlier in the thread, it's a Hy-Tek issue. The online registration is correctly coded to communicate with Hy-Tek. The download puts the athletes on the right teams, or non-scoring or whatever. It's the same system used the past few years, and we had fairly prompt masters team scores in Bend.

The timer obviously has never timed a USATF XC Masters Championships before (not many have). Someone from the National Office or the Committee Chairs should have warned the timer that there is an known issue with Hy-Tek, and that they needed to communicate with timers from previous years to see how they made the team scores compute properly. I don't know if that happened or not.

I'm not trying to throw the timer under the bus. Hy-Tek sucks and there isn't a viable alternative. Everything would have been perfectly set up in the system and would have appeared that it should have worked. If no one warned you in advance that this was an issue, you wouldn't know. The timers the past few years have known what the workaround is. I don't even know what the workaround is, all I know is that other people have made it work before, but it's not something easy like checking a box in Hy-Tek. My local officials are total whizzes at Hy-Tek and couldn't figure it out.

There is nothing that could have been coded differently in the registration system to avoid this problem. Hy-Tek cannot handle a cross country event that has individual results in 5-year divisions and team scores in 10year+ divisions... even though they will let you set it up like that so it looks like it will work.

The timer would not have had any way of knowing this was a problem unless someone clearly explained it to them in advance. It's not a well known thing.

not at lehigh wrote:

For this meet, is the timing company also doing the scoring, or did they simply provide a clock and a list of finishers to USATF? For all those blaming USATF (which I agree has plenty of issues), I think the problem rests with whoever is contracted to score the meet.

The timing company does the scoring. They download the entries from USATF and it has the athlete declarations and such already entered in to the system. There are plenty of legitimate gripes to have with USATF, but the team scoring issues are not directly their fault.

I'm guessing there was a lack of institutional knowledge by staffers about the issues with Hy-Tek (because they never deal directly with Hy-Tek themselves) and an overall complacency by everyone involved because the timers used in recent years knew how to work around Hy-Tek's issues.

There is no way the timer would have known there was a problem unless someone warned them, I don't know if that happened or not.

The most productive thing is to blame Hy-Tek... maybe someone here will be annoyed enough to write a better program ;) One based in 2010s technology, not early 1990s technology...

Not having used Hytek in several years, would this work?

Enter an individual runner using name, age, and team:

John Doe, 42, Running Club

Jim Smith, 51, Running Club

Then when teams are delcared, alter the team name so that it is obvious at a glance for which age group team race it is delcared:

John Doe, 42, 40 Running Club

Jim Smith, 51, 50 Running Club

At the end of the meet, generate results based on age group (this attribute didn't change, so that's easy. Then pull out all of the teams that start with 40 and score a 40-49 team race. Then pull out all of the teams that start with 50 and score a 50-59 team race. Continue for all of the age groups.

Even though John and Jim are part of the same club, you have to treat their teams differently in the software. I'd image the timing company didn't do this.

not at lehigh wrote:

Scoring the meet is simple...IF everything is entered/coded correctly beforehand.

Scoring the meet is NOT simple for a masters cross country meet with multiple age divisions.

It is interesting to see what other Associations do. In Pacific Northwest, I make the teams declare in advance who their scoring athletes will be, like they do for Nationals. We had a Club NW 'B' athlete score ahead of Club NW 'A' athletes at our Association Meet, and I didn't flip flop them around, I stuck with what was declared, since that is how it works at Nationals.

For the masters team scores, I've started printing score sheets in advance, to make scoring at the meet a little faster.

That's a pretty slick web interface you guys have at Pacific! I went to Associations Workshop and a number of people from your Association presented on a variety of topics. Very well-run Association :)

polevaultpower wrote:

not at lehigh wrote:

Scoring the meet is simple...IF everything is entered/coded correctly beforehand.

Scoring the meet is NOT simple for a masters cross country meet with multiple age divisions.

Not to be a brat, but yes it is. We're not doing fluid analysis or working with differential equations here. There were 595 runners in the masters race...give me a list of the delcared teams and an Excel spreadsheet and I'll have the results for you in a matter of hours, not days.

What i think the timing company is trying to do (based on your posts) is get the software to work after the fact knowing there's a glitch. At this point, you stop using Hytek and do it by hand. if you have accurate raw results, team scores are just a matter of sorting and scoring.

Good to know. Everyone's watch that I was with showed 6.2 on the dot. Strava didn't even give me credit for a 10k PR :-(

There were a ton of sharp corners that will potentially mess up GPS watches, and will certainly leave room for error in the wheel measurement. But whatever, it's XC. It was darned near 10k.

not at lehigh wrote:

polevaultpower wrote:

Scoring the meet is NOT simple for a masters cross country meet with multiple age divisions.

Not to be a brat, but yes it is. We're not doing fluid analysis or working with differential equations here. There were 595 runners in the masters race...give me a list of the delcared teams and an Excel spreadsheet and I'll have the results for you in a matter of hours, not days.

What i think the timing company is trying to do (based on your posts) is get the software to work after the fact knowing there's a glitch. At this point, you stop using Hytek and do it by hand. if you have accurate raw results, team scores are just a matter of sorting and scoring.

I agree with you, at this point, three days after the meet, it surely would have been faster to dump everything in Excel and score it there. It's not _simple_ but it's not rocket science either. A pain in the butt for a meet this size, but doable. They could have done it all with pen and paper by now.