I have a couple questions regarding the grades available when entering new athletes for my teams. In our state, middle school athletes can be from grades 5-9, and the site only allows me to go up to grade 8. For our high school team the athletes can be from grade 7-12, and the site only gives me the option of 9-12. Is there a way to make these other grades available? We will also have several athletes (those in grades 7-8-9) who run the middle school AND high school schedule at the same time - will there be any issues with having them on both rosters, and will all of their results still get linked with the same individual?
Thanks
Pat Belzer
In the past this hasn't been an issue, but David is trying to move towards a situation where 9-12 grades are on the HS side and all others are on the MS side of Athletic.net. This is more in line with nation-wide standards, even though different states may be exceptions to the rule.
Take a look at this page that was just added to the wiki, for some potential help with any issues you run into: http://wiki.athletic.net/Athlete%20Editor.ashx
Hope that helps,
Andy
Thanks for showing me that - I hadn't seen that before. Can I send these names both ways? For example, the first meet of the season is a varisty meet - and several of the athletes from 7th and 8th grades will be running on the varsity team. The 2nd meet they will be running on the middle school team, and the 3rd meet they will be back with the Varsity. This pattern continues throughout the school year. Can I selectively send these athletes back & forth between these two teams throughout the season?
This upgrade looks to be a downgrade for my particular circumstances. In ND, there are several 7th & 8th graders who many times are the best runner on the varsity team (or the State, for that matter) - and they can run in both levels for a couple of years. We don't necessarily go by grade levels, but it seems like that is the direction that you guys are pushing. The old system seemed like it had this flexibility built into it. I don't see that in this new setup - hopefully I am missing something! Let me know how to handle these athletes that will be doing BOTH schedules in the same season...
Pat
Actually, that link I pointed out, isn't going to allow you to transfer kids back and forth between your HS & JH rosters, it simply allows you to clean-up the roster, so you don't run into the error messages when trying to edit athletes.
I'm curious, are you allowed to take 7th & 8th graders to the Varsity State Meet, so they can compete there, or not?
Andy Prior: I'm curious, are you allowed to take 7th & 8th graders to the Varsity State Meet, so they can compete there, or not?
Pat Belzer: The state of ND allows any athlete in grades 7-12 to compete at the high school level. In fact, several of our state champions have come from the 7th and 8th grades – especially in the girls divisions. Some of our past champions won a certain event 4 or 5 times. Our rules also say that 9th graders can compete at the middle school level (we call it Junior High). Most of our JH meets restrict it to 7th & 8th grade competition, but we still go to some JH meets that have the 9th graders competing. If a school is below a certain enrollment, their 5th and 6 graders can compete at the JH level – but they have to run against the older grades, and don’t have their own division. So in my school, we have grades 5 through 9 competing in the JH meets, and grades 7 through 12 competing in the Varsity level. Those athletes in grades 7 through 9 can run at either or both levels throughout the season, as long as they stay within the maximum # of meets allowed. That is where I am having the problem with the website – how do I work around this issue? I don’t have every 7th and 8th grader compete at the varsity level, but I do move them up there for some meets if I think they can help the team out. And I let the 9th graders move “down” to the JH level for at least one meet/year so they have their chance to place higher in a meet.
The state of ND allows any athlete in grades 7-12 to compete at the high school level. In fact, several of our state champions have come from the 7th and 8th grades – especially in the girls divisions. Some of our past champions won a certain event 4 or 5 times. Our rules also say that 9th graders can compete at the middle school level (we call it Junior High). Most of our JH meets restrict it to 7th & 8th grade competition, but we still go to some JH meets that have the 9th graders competing. If a school is below a certain enrollment, their 5th and 6 graders can compete at the JH level – but they have to run against the older grades, and don’t have their own division.
So in my school, we have grades 5 through 9 competing in the JH meets, and grades 7 through 12 competing in the Varsity level. Those athletes in grades 7 through 9 can run at either or both levels throughout the season, as long as they stay within the maximum # of meets allowed. That is where I am having the problem with the website – how do I work around this issue? I don’t have every 7th and 8th grader compete at the varsity level, but I do move them up there for some meets if I think they can help the team out. And I let the 9th graders move “down” to the JH level for at least one meet/year so they have their chance to place higher in a meet.
Ok, here is a possible solution that I want to run past a few coaches before I spend the time to implement it:
So, an athlete would belong to only 1 school, but would be on the roster for both.
Here in TX, an athlete who hasn't begun 9th grade isn't allowed to compete in Varsity meets, or else their 4 year HS eligibility clock begins. Obviously they're also not allowed to compete in the District meet, nor are they eligible to advance all the way to State.
HS athletes who have already begun 9th grade are not allowed to compete against 7th & 8th graders in JH competition, thus preventing them from dominating a JH meet. However, we are allowed to have 8th grade athletes, and sometimes 7th too, compete in HS meets on a JV HS squad, in which case they are in fact competing against 9th, 10th and sometimes 11th graders, too.
I have no problem with your solution David, although it may be better to also have some sort of limitation, or notation that they are JV athletes, similar to a college RS designation and thus ineligible for post-season meets.
There must be a huge difference in rules and regulations from state to state! I just looked up the past history of a girl who is a shopomore in a ND school that compete in our best division. She has run in 4 State XC meets, winning a couple and finishing no worse than 2nd. In track she has run at 3 State Track meets, where she won individual titles in the 100, 200, 400, & 800 as an 8th grader and a 9th grader. As a 7th grader she also won the 400 and placed high in the 800 and two relays. She was the State Champ 5 times before she even got to the 9th grade! I wonder how many states are out there that have rules that would have prohibited her from accomplishing that if she had lived elsewhere? Growing up and living in ND, I didn't realize that the rules were so different in other states...
That's definitely different than how we do it in Oregon! Here, MS (5/6-8) and HS (9-12) are strictly seperated competition wise. Even if the schools are all under one roof and practice at the same time, they compete seperately. Hence, how we set up the site initially.
Our overall goal with having MS & HS seperate, is so a 7th grader's results aren't buried on the page under much faster HS athletes. Rather, we were wanting to have MS performance lists with just MS athletes, and the same for the HS performance lists.
I believe David has come up with a solution, and figuring out how to implement it now :)
I have completed a beta version of the proposed athlete management system. Teams who have schools linked can access the new page by going to the Athlete Editor and clicking the link: "Advanced Athlete Editor: for linked teams". (Only available for Track & Field at the moment. I will enable it for XC if the track beta goes well.)
I am aware that pages such as the results editor do not show the additional linked athletes yet. I will review the site pages over the next few days.
Thanks for the feedback on this issue!
I have started to shuffle my athletes to the appropriate rosters for this coming season. It looks like I also have the option to go back to the 2007 season and make some adjustments to which level they were in - am I reading that right? We just joined this site for track last spring so I only have one year of data in so far, and would like to make it match what we are doing from here forward. Will it be difficult for me to manipulate my data from last year with the athletes that did both schedules? I only had one middle school athlete run 3 HS meets, and about 6 HS kids run 2 MS meets...
Thanks for the question. The new editor simply activates and de-activates a given athlete, for a given season. Their results do not get moved, so if they have results with a given team, they need to remain active with that team for the results to show up. It also provides the ability to transfer the actual athlete between the schools. Again, no results are moved. I would transfer the athlete to the "school" they are currently a member of.
If you happen to de-activate an athlete that has results, the results are still there, but will now show up on some of the reports. (You should re-activate them for the given season/school to get the results back)
As far as I can tell, the only way to get my results from last year to be correct would be to delete the results from the meets that aren't in the proper place(high school or middle school), add that meet back in under the right division, and then put the results back in - right?
Pat Belzer: As far as I can tell, the only way to get my results from last year to be correct would be to delete the results from the meets that aren't in the proper place(high school or middle school), add that meet back in under the right division, and then put the results back in - right?
Correct, and the results will still show up in the athlete profiles, either way.
If you decide to re-enter results, because of what I know of how your meets are ran, I would recommend leaving 8th grade results on the HS side, if they were ran at a primarily HS meet. If the results are from a specifically MS meet, then moving them would be the appropriate action.
One other issue I see now - when I go to the school records link and click on the name of the person who I have listed on both rosters last year (Bridger Belzer), it brings up the same statistics many, many times. This is his athlete profile page. It is only showing some of the events he competed in - but not all. And it lists these same events many times. On the right side of the page it shows his season records, and all of those appear to be correct...