Linking through the years

Hey David, I'm not sure if this would be feasible, but would it be possible to link an athlete's results from middle school all the way through college? For example, on an athlete's profile page eight years from now it would include all results from 7th grade through their sophomore year in college. Or for this year, someone's high school results and this year's college marks. I would guess that you would need coaches to contact you when an athlete moves on to the next level, and let you know what schools would be involved, etc., but I know from reading these posts and others that some track coaches would be willing to get you that info. Just a thought. Also on this subject, but not related specifically to the college integration thread, if we e-mail you athletes who have transferred either into or away from our schools, could you then link their information to the new school? Thanks!

I mentioned that (HS and College specifically, not MS and HS) indirectly to David previously, and I believe the mechanism is already in place. Here's an example of an athlete that transferred after frosh year:

http://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/Athlete.aspx?AID=12971

Scroll on down and you'll see the different schools reflected for freshman and sophomore years.  That's even better than linking up multiple profiles!

Dan 

The potential for an athlete`s career performance all on one page is perhaps one of the most attractive features - middle school through college. 

How did the athlete who transferred schools get times consolidated? In our region, a lot of athletes at the DODD schools are here only for a season or 2. Would be nice if they can transfer their records to their next post.

Is there an automated way of linking MS and HS?

I believe at this point linking of the athletes as they move from different schools is a manual process.  Let us know and we'll do it.  I can see the need for an automated process in the future. 

To link a MS & HS, from your school page, click on Edit School Information.  About halfway down the page is a 'Linked Middle School' (or High School).  Click on Change Link ID, then select the school from the list.  Then the linked school will show up under Related Teams on the school homepage.  It will also make it easier to add access to that school to your current account. 

What if there was a link on the Athlete Editor page that allowed you to designate an athlete's new or old school/team? This way similar to how we can submit feedback regarding merging of meets, we could submit a "merging of athlete profiles" request.

I still think that eventually, we may want to consider allowing student/athletes limited access to their own stat pages, so that they can provide this information to college coaches at schools they may be interested in attending. This way they could even add additional data that would only be visible to coaches who are logged in and to the athlete themselves, such as desired major in college, other sports they participate in, SAT/ACT test scores, GPA info, or other basic information that a college coach might be interested in to assist in the overall recruiting process, without turning the pages into a track specific MySpace page or something negative.

At the moment, I'm simply e-mailing coaches at schools that my athletes tell me they are interested in and informing those coaches of the ability to use this site to track not only my athletes but others they may be scouting. Eventually, it will catch on with more and more college coaches.