EASY MEET MANAGER

EASY MEET MANAGER Quick Overview of program operation www.goeasyware.com By Dave Abineri EASYWARE: PO Box 231, Milford, OHIO 45150 (Cincinnati) Phone: (513) 248-0590 Use UP arrow to move to the NEXT slide Use DOWN arrow to move to the PREVIOUS slide

On the main screen of Easy MEET Manager (EMM), you will see across the top the main pull-down menu options: FILE for saving and loading, importing and exporting etc EVENTS for setting up your events, records, cut times ENTRIES for entering your swimmer into the meet (must enter events first) SEEDING to seed your meet in a variety of ways HEAT SHEETS to print your heat sheets in a variety of formats SET TIMER INTERFACE to decide on which electronic timer, if any, you ill use ENTER RESULTS to enter times for each event during the meet, and more SCORE to score your meet in several different modes MEET RESULTS for your final results in a variety of formats. Notice that these items are arranged in roughly the way you would run a meet if you were doing it manually so you just work your way across this list from left to right as you prepare for and run your meet. Overview For more details on all that is listed in this presentation, please click HELP on the main screen and then INDEX to find the topic of interest.

Dual Meets Dual meets are particularly easy with Easy Meet Manager. After creating your meet, you ask the two teams to submit their entries at least 24 hours ahead of the meet electronically. You can then import all the entries in seconds, and seed and print heat sheets ready for the meet the next day. After the meet you can post results on a web site (see http://7hillsleague.org/summer2007/sevenhillsleague07.htm for a sample) and export the results for updating Easy Team Manager or other Team Management software.

How to Run a Meet What follows is a basic outline of how to prepare for and run a meet. Not all the various choice will be discussed, just the important ones, so be sure to look around carefully on each screen to see what the main options are at each stage of the process. Begin by choosing FILE, CREATE A NEW MEET and this will give you the opportunity to set up the important parameters for your meet on the MEET SETUP screen.

Meet Setup • The meet name and the Headlines will appear on the top of most reports. • Specify the pool length • Specify TIME or HEAT LANE entry method • Specify the Meet Type • Most choices are clear. Use TIME entry if entering seed times but use HEAT?LANE entry if you want to place swimmers into particular heats and lanes. Be sure teams coming to your meet understand that they must do the same. • Use FILE, EDIT MEET SETUP to return to this screen.

Time vs Heat/Lane In most meets, swimmer are seeded by time but in many dual meets one team uses the odd lanes and the other the event lanes. Easy Meet Manager lets you put each swimmer in a particular heat and lane so please read the help screen under INDEX, ENTRIES.

Enter Your Events For each event, choose the correct option from the three pull-down boxes, choose an age group, distance and stroke then click ADD/CHANGE to add the event to the list. Events may also be imported.

Enter Swimmers Manually Click Male/Female, enter name and team, type seed time into those events this swimmer is to be entered in. Use NT for no time. Do not type punctuation. All times MUST be typed to HUNDREDTHS place i.e 12345 becomes 1:23.45.

Entering Swimmers Continued • You may also enter swimmers manually by touching F9, typing an event NUMBER, then pressing ENTER and then typing a time (or NT) and then ENTER and repeating the process until this swimmers is in all the correct events. • By clicking PRINT you can get a variety of reports showing who is entered in which events. • If you need to find a swimmer to edit his/her entry, use the search capabilities at the bottom of the screen or click the SEARCH button.

Entering Swimmers Continued Speaking of reports, all reports are PREVIEWED on screen before committing them to the printer. Just click the arrows at the top to move among the pages. Clicking the ENVELOPE icon allows for exporting as, for example a PDF file so you can send each team their entries for confirmation if you wish.

Entering Swimmers Continued Of course, the easy way to enter swimmers is by electronic file transfer rather than manual entry. Easy Meet Manager can accept entries from a variety of electronic sources including Team Management software and Spread Sheets. Spread Sheets are a great way for teams without Team Management software to be able easily to enter meets. Please download the Spread Sheets on the EasyWare web site, modify them for your meet and distribute to teams entering your meet.

Seeding the Meet Just enter the START and FINISH numbers and your meet will be seeded in seconds. This process arranges all the swimmers into the proper heats and lanes and can be re-done as often as necessary. DO NOT re-seed the meet after processing results since it will return swimmers to seed order rather than finish order!

Heat Sheets Look very carefully at all the heat sheet options and try out each report by clicking PRINT/PREVIEW. Note that you can print in 1,2 or 3 column mode, can print in HTML for posting to a web site and can include a variety of information on the sheets. Lane cards can be printed here preferably using perforated sheets of 3x5 cards or using labels for cards. Lots to try here!

Sample Heat Sheet

ENTER RESULTS First, choose your timer (if using electronic timing), specify your default printer and indicate which event you want to pull up for entering results.

Entering Results cont’d Next come lots of options as you run your meet on the day of the competition so we’ll look at parts of the process at a time. You will want to practice with this screen as much as you can so that you can see how to: Enter times Import times from timer Move swimmers around Add late entries Add a new heat Remove swimmers Score Print event results

Entering Results cont’d Here is the whole screen but let’s look at part of it at a time for ease of description.

Entering Results cont’d Here, the swimmers are shown by heat and lane in alternating colors to make it easy to read. You will just click on the TIME column and type in the time for each swimmer (NO punctuation and last digit is the HUNDREDTHS place so that 12345 becomes 1:23.45 and 3456 becomes 34.56. Type S for scratch and D for DQ into this column.

Entering Results cont’d At the top left you choose whether you are processing PRELIMS or FINALS. You may choose to show swimmers in FINISH order AFTER all the times are entered to check for errors. You may move to the next event or the previous event by clicking a button and can print the results of the event or the award labels for the event using the appropriate button. To jump to another event, just pull down the event number box and choose your number or enter the event number in the box and press ENTER.

Entering Results cont’d You may choose what to include on the printed results. Splits are most used when you are importing from an electronic timer but they may be added manually using the EDIT SPLITS button. You may remove a swimmer from the event by clicking on the row he/she is in and then clicking REMOVE. If you don’t need the lane for another swimmer you may enter S for the time to Scratch the swimmer. You may Clear the times for this event or Add a Heat should you need to by clicking the button. Note that there are two ways to insert a swimmer at the last minute, let’s do this next.

Entering Results cont’d Clicking on INSERT IN MEET ALREADY shows a list of swimmers already in the meet and they can be shown in several different formats to make them easier to find. Once you see the swimmer to insert, just click-and-drag the swimmer to any empty lane and they are instantly in that event.

Entering Results cont’d First click on the grid row of an EMPTY LANE. Clicking INSERT NOT IN MEET ALREADY produces this box into which you may type the name, choose the team and specify the age and gender. When you click OK, that swimmer is entered into that empty lane AND will show up on future events as being in the meet already so that you may just click and drag in future events.

Entering Results cont’d Finally, at the lower right is a choice to automate award labels so that only full sheets of 3x10 labels are printed. You will be told when you hit a multiple of 30 saved labels and then can print full sheets without wasting any labels. Also visible is the timer interface (Colorado Timer is shown here). On this timer, you just specify the heat you want from the timer and the times and splits are automatically imported and just pop up on the screen! Saves a great deal of typing!

Entering Results cont’d Not mentioned on this screen is the option to AVERAGE WATCH TIMES. Once this has been chosen you simply type the first wath time and touch ENTER, then the second watch time and press ENTER, then the third (or as many as you have) and press ENTER. After the last time, press an extra ENTER and the average of the times is placed in that cell of the grid. As you type the times, they show across the bottom of the screen for easy reference.

Entering Results cont’d You may leave the event any time and return to finish and all times are automatically saved. You may rearrange swimmers by clicking and dragging them from one heat/lane to another or drop one on top of another to switch the two. Any changes made here are remembered for the heat sheets should you want to do some rearranging but DON’T re-seed or they will be put back into original seed order.

Entering Results cont’d You cannot PRINT or SCORE or produce AWARD LABELS until you have a time or NT or SCR for each swimmer in the event. You may edit any times now or later by simply overtypng the time with a correct time. You may then need to re-score the event if it has already been scored with the error present. So that’s all that happens during the meet itself and needs a little practice to be able to do things quickly. Touch F1 for reminders on this busy screen! If you are entering times manually, you will need a system to bring the time cards to you as quickly as possible after each heat is finished so that you can enter the times and keep up with the meet. Six times can be typed faster than a heat is swum so you can keep up with a little practice. If you are NOT typing, you are getting behind.

Scoring Scoring can be done in a variety of modes but the simplest is to pick the scoring type you want from the boxes at the top and then specify the start and finish events to be scored. Be sure to set the point values for your scoring system before doing any scoring. It is important to understand that the scoring just adds up the points that have previously been assigned in ENTER RESULTS so that nay corrections made to an event will be correctly reflected in the scores calculated here.

Meet results Again, there are many choices to try out in producing the complete results of your meet so please experiment to see what works best for you. Note that HTML is again an option for rapid posting to a web site. Printing for the newspaper is also useful here.

Help! Finally, how to get help! On the main screen, choose HELP for more details on each topic. Choose INDEX to see all the topics. Contact David Abineri at dabineri@goeasyware.com for email help. Finally, practice with the program and check out all your hardware and power connections BEFORE your meet so that you know all is going to work properly.

Need a New Feature? Do let us know if there is something special that you need in the program and we’ll do our best to get it included on the next free upgrade. Always check to see that you have the latest free upgrade before each of your meets. You can see what the latest version number is by going to www.goeasyare.com and clicking on the Swimming Upgrades link.

Reminders Easy TEAM Manager is the companion program to run your team by keeping track of every swimmer in every meet in every season and making it possible to generate many useful and motivational reports as well as to easily generate electronic entries for your meets since all the names, ages and best times are readily available within the program.

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Progression of times report showing each swimmer’s progress from meet to meet in each event.

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Top Times listed by event for the whole team. Really helps in making line-up for dual meets etc.

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Times from a single meet showing the improvement for each swimmer in each of his/her events

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Improvement report showing improvement from the first meet of the season to present.

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Best possible relay combinations based on all the swimmers’ times. Saves lots of times and helps make objective decisions!

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Multiple meet analysis showing, for each meet the number and percentage of swimmers achieving their best times. Which meet did we really peak for?

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Team roster in a variety of formats.

Sample Easy TEAM Manager Reports Attendance sheets in several formats.

EasyWare For your swimming software needs. www.goeasyware.com

EASY MEET MANAGER