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Setting up and Running a Saturday Dual Meet

Wednesday or Thursday

From Team Manager, Team Unify, or Swimtopia:

These steps are for exporting your team's rosters and entries. These specific instructions are for Team Manager, but there are similar steps for the other programs.

  1. Make sure the coaches have completed the meet event entries.
  2. After the coaches complete the event entries, you need to export both the team roster and the event entries from Team Manager.
    • For Team Manager, From the File menu, Select “Export” and then “Athletes/Teams”. A dialog box will appear asking you where you want to save the files.
    • On the dialog, there is an option to select a team – e.g. select “MCF-PV”. Make sure “All” is highlighted (not just male or female, again “All” is the default.) Click “OK”. The export progress is displayed. Once completed, hit “OK” to close the export dialog.
    • Again, from the File menu, Select “Export” but this time then choose “Meet Entries”. Select the meet you want to export entries for (e.g. Week 1A). If the export directory is not set to the desired
      location, use the directory hierarchy on the left to set the export directory location.
  3. You will want to print the entries for the meet. You will need to create a report of entries by event to share with the visiting team and you will create two reports showing entries by gender and age.
    • To create the report by event, select the “Reports” menu, and then select “Performance” and lastly “Meet Entries”. Select the meet (e.g. 16-Jun-14 Week 1A) and the team (e.g. MCF-PV). The default is to create the report by event number, so simply click “OK” to create the report. Once the report appears, you can print it to either an attached printer, or if you have a PDF printer driver installed, you can create a PDF version of the document that you can then copy to the flash drive if desired.
    • After creating the report by event, run the same meet entries report, but this time first select “Female” and choose the option to Sort by Name. Generate the report, then print both a hard copy
      and optionally a PDF version.
    • Repeat the same steps, but select “Male” and then sort by Name.
    • Once you have completed Step 3, you will have the meet entry reports by event, and by gender/name.
    • You are now done with Team Manager.

Meet Manager, for home teams:

On Friday, the day prior to the meet, you will receive the flash drive or email with two files from the visiting team. Those files are their athlete roster and their event entries (the same two files you generated in Step 1 above). You will also be told whether the visiting team selected off or even lanes.

To prepare for the meet, start Meet Manager. Go to the File menu and select “Open/New”. Go to the folder where the meet templates from MCSL were saved and open up the appropriate meet database file.

Now, the first thing you need to do is import the team rosters and the team entries.

  1.  Go to the “File” menu, select “Import” and then select “Rosters Only”. Navigate to the location where you saved the roster files (either the flash drive or the local hard drive if you copied files from
    the flash drive). Select the file and hit “OK”. Another dialog will appear saying that the contents of the zip file will be extracted – just hit okay ignore that dialog (It is probably the single biggest point
    of confusion for users and should never appear). Anyway, once done, you will see a message indicating that the roster has been imported and it will show you the # of athletes imported.
    NOTE: IF a roster file was created by Team Unify, you will want to use the “Import Entries” option but select their roster file – admittedly confusing.
  2. Repeat step #1 above, but this time you will select the visiting team’s roster file that should be on the flash drive you now have connected to the computer. Again, once completed, you should see a message indicating that some # of athletes have been imported.
  3. Go back to the “File” menu, select “Import” and this time select “Entries”. Select the location of the entries file and complete the import. Like the roster, you will get a message indicating that Meet
    Manager is extracting the file… ignore it blissfully and just hit “OK” knowing the entries will be loaded.
  4. Repeat Step #3 above, but this time load in the visiting team’s entries on their flash drive. You have now completed the hardest part of setting up a meet – getting the data from the team software into Meet Manager.

Configuring Lane Assignments:

  1. Click on the “Set-up” menu and select “Seeding Preferences”. A new dialog box appears. Click on the “Dual Meets” tab at the top of the dialog. Now, you will set the team assignments for lanes 1-6. You can do this either by dragging-and-dropping the team names into the lane assignments on the right, or by alternately double-clicking on the team names to set the lanes.
  2. At the bottom there are four check boxes. You want to make sure that “Strict Assignment All heats” is checked and that “Use Lane Assignments Above” is checked. The other two options should be
    unchecked.
  3. Hit “OK” – you are now finished configuring lane assignments.

Seeding the Meet:

  1. From the main menu, click on “Seeding”. A new window appears showing events below and a session list above (you can ignore sessions.)
  2. Simply click on the “Select-All” option in the menu bar and then click on “Start Seeding” – the program will run for a bit but soon you will have a completely seeded meet.

Printing programs and lane/timer sheets:

  1. Print the meet program: Select the “Reports” option on the Seeding screen and then select “Meet Program”. A new dialog opens – click on “Select All” to ensure all events appear in the program. At the bottom of the dialog, set the Columns/Formats to Triple column. Back at the top of the dialog, click the “Create Report” menu item. In a little bit, the meet program will appear. You can print a copy to use for programs to sell.
  2. Double-check the program prior to printing to make sure all of the entries/lane assignments etc. look like what you expect. If anything looks wrong, revisit the earlier steps for meet seeding. You can re-run the same meet program report, but this time select “Double” columns. Again, you can print the report and use this to create copies for clerk of course and other officials’ use.
  3. Close the Meet Program report dialog by clicking the “X” in the top-right corner.
  4. Print the lane timer sheets: Again from the “Reports” menu, select “Lane Timer Sheets”. At the top of the dialog, click “Select All” to include all events. At the bottom of the page, make sure the Format option is set to “2 Events or Lanes Per Page” and that the Parameters show # of lanes to be 1 to 6.
  5. At the top of the form, click the “Create Report” menu item – The document will appear. Simply print this (120+ pages), and enjoy cutting and sorting.
  6. That’s it! You are now ready for Saturday’s meet.

Saturday – Running the Meet:

I’m not going to say too much about running the meet – basically this is when you enter in times, print results and award labels as the meet progresses. You should have somebody at the automation table who knows when to print whatever needs printing.

Saturday – End of Meet:

A few tasks need to be handled at the end of the meet. I’ve found it is best to do these in the following order:

  1. Run the Scores Report – Select all of the events and generate the report. This should have the final score of the meet. Only run this after the final events have been verified. Print 3 copies – one for each
    head coach and one of the records.
  2. Finish printing any award ribbons for events that have not yet been printed.
  3. Go to the “File” menu, select “Export” then “Results for Team Manager or SWIMS or NCAA Database”. Select the name of the visiting Team and hit “OK”. You will be asked where you want to save the results. Specify the visiting team’s flash drive and save their team’s results.
  4. Go to the “File” menu, select “Backup”. Specify a backup location – again select the visiting team’s flash drive and hit OK. This is making a copy of the Meet Manager database for the visiting team to
    review in case there are any questions/discrepancies. Pull the flash drive and return to the visiting team’s coach or automation rep.
  5. Repeat step 3, but this time export the results for Manchester Farm – save the results to C:\TMIIData\2012\Imports.
  6. Repeat Step 4, but this time, save the backup to a location on your flash drive or hard drive. This is the file you will be e-mailing to the automation rep for the division once you get back to your house
    after the meet. (optionally, you can save this to a flash drive, as that will make it easier to e-mail the file.)
  7. Lastly, export the meet results, but do not select a Team – you want results for both teams. This results file + the meet backup should be mailed to your division automation coordinator.
  8. Start Team manager – once running, select the “File” menu, then “Import” and then “Meet Results”. Team Manager will ask you to select a file to import – navigate to the drive/directory with the results file
    and select the results file for the meet you just completed.
  9. Once you have imported the results, go to the “Reports” menu, then select “Performance” and “Meet Results”. When the dialog opens, select the meet you just completed, make sure the Sort by
    option is set to “Name” and click “Create Report”. Print the report and give a copy to the head coach. She may want to use this when highlighting swimmer performances during ribbon hand-out.

Saturday – Upon Returning Home:

Send an email to the division automation rep, attaching a copy of the meet backup file and meet results (see Steps #6 and #7 above.) That’s it – you are done for the weekend!