Competition - Top Times

Hey guys, just a few comments about the top times from the one who does most of the maintenance on the database. First, there are NO official USMS mandates to carry out this process. So, most people associated with meets are generally not inclined to do it unless they are asked. In the past year, there has been a notable shift however and more meet directors do voluntarily submit the meets. The bottom line is that (for the moment) it must be the interested swimmers who drive the process, particularly for the short-course yards season. Last year, I decided (as an interested swimmer) to chase down all LCM and SCM meets I became aware of. In addition, I worked out a way to create the needed files from posted HTML and PDF files when meet directors were not responsive (or were unable to obtain the required files). That resulted in about 200 meets listed for those two courses, about half of which I created manually. Since the manual creation of the needed files used about 100 hours of my time, I decided NOT to tackle the SCY meets, where there are huge numbers of meets. This is certainly one reason why not so many meets are in the database at this time. I will post any SCY meets that are sent to me in the correct format. Right now, there is one meet sitting on my HD that is not yet posted (a Dixie Zone meet). I'll get that done this week & that will clear the books. The fact that there are comments in this forum shows that there are interested swimmers. The best way to help here is to volunteer on the local level to find all the meets, for example, in your state or zone. Once you have identified a meet & located the meet director, ask for either a HyTek zipped backup file, a HyTek CommLink file or an SDIF file. All these can be created by HyTek's Meet Manager (Windows version). You can then forward these files to me (meldyck@infomagic.net) and I will post them in the searchable database. For non-standard SCY meet results listings, we still have a problem because I don't yet have the time to convert these files manually. Maybe next year after I retire but not yet. Anyhow, I'd be really happy to get all the additional help I can get from the local level. Your swimming colleagues will thank you for it and so will I! Hope these comments help. You can e-mail me with other questions if you have them. mel dyck

Hey guys, just a few comments about the top times from the one who does most of the maintenance on the database. First, there are NO official USMS mandates to carry out this process. So, most people associated with meets are generally not inclined to do it unless they are asked. In the past year, there has been a notable shift however and more meet directors do voluntarily submit the meets. The bottom line is that (for the moment) it must be the interested swimmers who drive the process, particularly for the short-course yards season. Last year, I decided (as an interested swimmer) to chase down all LCM and SCM meets I became aware of. In addition, I worked out a way to create the needed files from posted HTML and PDF files when meet directors were not responsive (or were unable to obtain the required files). That resulted in about 200 meets listed for those two courses, about half of which I created manually. Since the manual creation of the needed files used about 100 hours of my time, I decided NOT to tackle the SCY meets, where there are huge numbers of meets. This is certainly one reason why not so many meets are in the database at this time. I will post any SCY meets that are sent to me in the correct format. Right now, there is one meet sitting on my HD that is not yet posted (a Dixie Zone meet). I'll get that done this week & that will clear the books. The fact that there are comments in this forum shows that there are interested swimmers. The best way to help here is to volunteer on the local level to find all the meets, for example, in your state or zone. Once you have identified a meet & located the meet director, ask for either a HyTek zipped backup file, a HyTek CommLink file or an SDIF file. All these can be created by HyTek's Meet Manager (Windows version). You can then forward these files to me (meldyck@infomagic.net) and I will post them in the searchable database. For non-standard SCY meet results listings, we still have a problem because I don't yet have the time to convert these files manually. Maybe next year after I retire but not yet. Anyhow, I'd be really happy to get all the additional help I can get from the local level. Your swimming colleagues will thank you for it and so will I! Hope these comments help. You can e-mail me with other questions if you have them. mel dyck