Options for timing/results of low key XC meets?

I coach in a similar program...weekly meets with approximately 50 runners per race. We have two people in charge of recording finish times (one person reads the time aloud off the stopwatch and the other writes them down). Then we have 3 or 4 people in charge of recording the order of finishers (i.e. writing down the race numbers)...this is done in the finishing chute. Later in the day back at headquarters we match up the two lists to produce the final results and post them to the league website. I also have a cheap digital camera on a tripod recording the finish line to help sort out errors.

See the "Time versus Place" description at the following website for details, more ideas, etc.

http://www.rrtc.net/finishline/subsystems.html

Have you tried having video camera at the finish line?

You can still use a stopwatch for the occasional sync but video helps you when you get a bunch of runners clustered together telling you order as well as relative separation.

Is your school able to provide any funds?

One of these watches and RaceTab Meet Manager(free) would get you set up pretty well.

http://www.nkhome.com/rowing-sports-products/watches/0135

http://racetab.milesplit.com/page/download

If you can come up with 80 extra bucks get the optical interface and you will truly be cooking with gasoline.

CircleofChub wrote:

Is your school able to provide any funds?

One of these watches and RaceTab Meet Manager(free) would get you set up pretty well.

http://www.nkhome.com/rowing-sports-products/watches/0135http://racetab.milesplit.com/page/download

If you can come up with 80 extra bucks get the optical interface and you will truly be cooking with gasoline.

Thanks for the link to Racetab. I've never run an official meet, that is free and looks to be useful. I've tooled around with it for a bit and it's tricky to figure out.

Thanks for the info.

I'd play around with Racetab for a bit. It can be confusing, but once you figure it out, it's pretty useful.

If you have everyone at your meet have their rosters uploaded to Milesplit, you can download the rosters and have them available. One thing we do, and we do huge league meets (70+ depending upon the race. We do 2 girls and 2 guys each week. Some races are like 70, some are over 120) here in an urban area, is to have each kid wear a card with their name and school. Someone at the line has the laptop with the timer running and clicks every time someone crosses the line. Someone later in the chute collects the cards and numbers them. Once the race is over, we go back and start entering a name for each time based on the cards. Since the rosters were all downloaded, it's pretty easy. The only problem is when other coaches are lazy and haven't done their job of making sure their roster on Milesplit is completely updated. So long you have a fully charged laptop or power, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

places done with popsicle sticks is a classic as well

They were doing this at Tennessee State XC back in 2001-2004. Does this mean we were poor?cry...

sfgdfg wrote:

places done with popsicle sticks is a classic as well