Pre-Season Checklist

The Worldwide Swimming Community offers many different ways to set up meet entries, submit those entries, run the meet and then import the meet results back into TEAM MANAGER.  Summer Leagues, High School dual meets, College Conference Championships, Age Group Meets, Masters Meets, all have their rules and operational guidelines.  What follows is a fairly generic checklist for the team's submitting their entries and importing their results back into TEAM MANAGER as well as a basic checklist for the meet host.  You will find a more extensive checklist for the meet host in the MEET MANAGER Help or User Guide.

This Pre-Season Checklist assumes you have already installed TEAM MANAGER and have gone through the Set-Up and added your athletes. Click Here for more information on How to Get Started.

Swim Team Tasks

Update PC before season starts

•Update security software including Anti-virus, Firewall software, pop-up stopper, spy ware, etc.

•Make sure you Windows Operating System has been updated.

•TEAM MANAGER update - start TM and click on Check for Updates.

•MEET MANAGER update - start MM and click on Check for Updates.

Visit League/Team web site for Additional Information

•Meet schedule

•Event files for Invitational & Championships

TEAM MANAGER software tasks before first Meet

•Set-Up menu, System Preferences - Set a new System age-up-date and Meet Age-Up-Date - for summer leagues, it is typically June 1 of current year.  For most year round age group teams, the meet age-up-date is always the first day of the meet.  For USA YMCA teams, it is always December 1 of the current year.

•Make sure your coaches names and other information are up to date for this season - Click Here for information about how to do that.

•Athlete Browser to add new swimmers and indicate those that are not returning to be Inactive.

•Export Athletes and email to the league if requested

•Add Meets for this season using the naming convention from prior Meets or Import the Meet Setup from the meet host prior to each meet.  If you are adding the meets by hand, use the Copy Events feature to copy events from a prior Meet to your new regular Meets

At this point, your TEAM MANAGER database has been updated with your new swimmers, the System Preferences have been updated and this season's meets have been added.  You are now ready for your first meet.

Declare your Meet Entries

•For each Meet in your TEAM MANAGER database, declare who is swimming each event.  Depending on your league's rules, you may also have to declare what heat and lane the swimmer is assigned - some summer leagues require this instead of letting MEET MANAGER seed the meet and assign the heat and lanes. You will also have to set up the relays for each meet and optional who is swimming in those relays. Click Here for more information on how to Declare your Meet Entries.

•After you have declared your meet entries and checked them using either the Meet Entry Browser or the various Meet Entry reports, you will want to Export those Meet Entries to diskette or to your hard drive to mail or email them to the meet host. Click Here for more information about exporting your meet entries to the meet host.

•You may want to Create Reports for Coaches, Officials, Parents, and the swimmers letting them know what they are swimming.  Check out the Meet Entry Spreadsheet Report as well as the Meet Split Sheets Report.

•Optionally Create Meet Entry Labels for Entry Slips

•After the Meet has been completed using MEET MANAGER, get a meet results file from the meet host and then Import the Meet Results into your TEAM MANAGER database.  If the meet is not being run using MEET MANAGER, Click Here for information about how to key the meet results into your TEAM MANAGER database and optionally include the place and points.

Meet Host Tasks

•If you are a year round club or you plan to run lots of meets during the year, you probably will set up each meet a few weeks before it starts.  But if you are a Summer League team or High School or College seasonal team, you might want to set up all the meets that you host.  Please refer to the MEET MANAGER Help/User Guide on how to setup a meet and how to use the "Save As" feature to minimize any duplicate efforts.

•Setup the Events for the meet - click on Events from the MEET MANAGER Menu bar..

•Import the Meet Entry file for each team in the meet.  if the team did not submit a meet entry file, then you will have to set up the team, add the swimmers and their entries.

•Seed the Meet unless your league requires that in the case of a dual meet, that each team submit their entries with heats and lanes already assigned.

•Run the meet - click on File / Run.

•Enter results as each heat or event is completed or import the times with splits form a Timing Console if it is available.

•After each event has been completed, print the results and post.

•After each event has been completed, you may want to print the Award labels to distribute.

•After the meet has been completed or during the meet, you may want to print and post the Team Scores.

•After the meet has been completed, you may want to export the meet results to a file to email to the teams participating in the meet or export them to diskettes to hand to each team representative.