Your First AthleticLIVE Cross Country Meet

Updated 8 months ago

Create the Meet Listing on AthleticLIVE
Integrate with Your Meet Management Software
- Set up Your Meet
- Configure FTP and Upload Meet Information
Integrate with FinishLynx (Live XC Scoreboards)
During the Meet
- Without a Live XC Scoreboard
- With a Live XC Scoreboard

AthleticLIVE is a powerful software suite that gives you many options for how you'd like to display your live results for a Cross Country meet. However, because of the numerous options available, setting up and running your first meet can be daunting! This article is a “getting started” guide designed to teach you exactly what to expect the first time you run a meet with AthleticLIVE.

Create the Meet Listing on AthleticLIVE

The first step to showing live results for any meet with AthleticLIVE is to create the meet listing on AthleticLIVE. This involves making decisions about how your meet will display results, what kinds of add-ons you'd like to use, and what meet management software and FAT software you'll be using. Additionally, you'll provide details about when and where the meet is, divisions within the meet, and how the meet should be scored.

Integrate with Your Meet Management Software

AthleticLIVE integrates tightly with your meet management software. The meet events, athletes, schedule, and results are all displayed on AthleticLIVE via data transmitted from your meet management software. For Cross Country, AthleticLIVE currently supports:

HyTek's Meet Manager
DirectAthletics MeetPro
The Race Director
RunScore
AthleticNET Custom CSV Format

Set up Your Meet

In your meet management software, you'll need to configure the meet much as you normally would, including setting up the events, downloading/importing entries, and seeding the meet.

Several features in AthleticLIVE require the use of competitor numbers. If you don't normally assign competitor numbers, make sure you get in the habit! Just ensure each competitor is assigned a unique number—no specific sequences are necessary. AthleticLIVE's software uses competitor numbers as an internal ID to refer to competitors in various parts of the software, and a lack of competitor numbers can cause unintended behavior.

Configure FTP and Upload Meet Information

You'll need to upload meet structure, athlete, and team data from your meet management software in order to successfully display results. AthleticLIVE uses reports from your meet management software to display the data. Before the meet, you'll need to upload some data manually, and then configure FTP uploads to upload the rest of the data.

Some T-Mobile hotspot users have reported trouble with FTP connectivity. If you experience difficulty using FTP when using a T-Mobile hotspot, you'll either need to use a different network, or consider using AthleticLIVE Local.

Configure FTP Uploads for Your Meet Management Software

The core of AthleticLive's functionality is to display meet results once they are entered into your meet management software and you publish them. Most meet management software uses FTP uploads to send event data, heat sheets, and results to various online display utilities, and this is how AthleticLIVE receives data. You'll need to configure your meet management software to upload meet data via FTP with the correct settings.

Upload Teams and Rosters

In order to properly match teams and athletes in the results files, AthleticLIVE requires a team and roster list from certain meet management software titles. If your software title is listed here, you'll need to upload team and roster reports either to the AthleticLIVE administration portal or natively through the software's FTP interface, depending on which software title you use. Some software titles upload teams and rosters as a single file, others require separate reports to be uploaded.

Upload an Event List

Once you've uploaded teams and rosters, you'll need to upload an event list. Some meet management software titles allow you to do this from within the software using the native FTP interface, while others require a report to be generated and uploaded via the AthleticLIVE administration portal.

Once you have uploaded your events, you may use the Manage Events link on the AthleticLIVE administration portal to do additional setup if you so desire. You can set split definitions, exclude teams from scoring if you know they won't field a complete team, or override scoring settings for a particular event.

Integrate with FinishLynx (Live XC Scoreboards)

If you use FinishLynx to time your Cross Country meets (either with or without a chip system), you have the capability to display up-to-the-second individual results, splits, split scores and team scores, and a live running clock, simply by purchasing a Pro Meet credit.

This article will show you how to configure a basic running time display on your live results using FinishLynx.

If you're timing a meet with wave starts using FinishLynx's Time Trial Plugin, use these instructions to display a running time and members of each wave.

For Live XC Scoreboards, AthleticLIVE supports two different types of scoreboard—a Simple XC Scoreboard, and a LIF Scoreboard.

Use these configuration settings to set up a simple live cross country scoreboard using FinishLynx's scoreboard outputs.

If you're running a meet with large races (over 400 participants), have different computers handling splits versus finish times, or don't have the FinishLynx Network COM Port plugin, you'll want to configure a LIF scoreboard.

During the Meet

Once your meet begins, you'll find that using AthleticLIVE to post results isn't at all disruptive to your normal “timing rhythm.” Depending on how your meet management software is configured, you might not notice any difference at all!

Without a Live XC Scoreboard

Without a live scoreboard, the flow of data is simple. Once the race is complete and results are entered into your meet management software, you publish the race results using your meet management software's FTP functions.

MeetPro's FTP interface can be finicky at times, especially when using a mobile hotspot. Installing AthleticLIVE Local and then using MeetPro's Publish to Disk function is a great alternative.

With a Live XC Scoreboard

A live XC scoreboard will display race results in real-time as they are evaluated or pulled from your chip system into FinishLynx. When the race is opened in FinishLynx, it will be displayed as “Live” to your viewers. If you close the event in FinishLynx, the event will disappear from the live scoreboard. While the race is in progress, splits and results entered into FinishLynx will be displayed, and AthleticLIVE will auto-calculate live scores and split scores based on that data. Once the race concludes, import the results data from FinishLynx into your meet management software, and then upload using the appropriate method for your meet management software described above.

All results posted using the Live XC Scoreboard will be overridden by the complete event results as uploaded by your meet management systems. Corrections, tie breakers, and other irregularities should be dealt with in your meet management software.