Your First AthleticLIVE Cross Country Meet
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.
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 uploads to upload the rest of the data.
HyTek's Meet Manager—Database Connection Option
If you're planning on doing lots of meets with AthleticLIVE, especially if you have an enterprise account, you'll want to use our HyTek Database Connection option. This option requires an initial time investment and some software to be installed on the computer running HyTek, but that investment will pay dividends in ease-of-use at each meet, since the HyTek Database Connection is the "hands-free" method for displaying meet data online. Any changes made to your HyTek database are reflected automatically on the AthleticLIVE site within a minute or two. An additional benefit is for users who operate HyTek on multiple networked computers sharing the same database. Changes to the database can be made on any computer logged into the HyTek database and will be reflected online.
HyTek's Meet Manager—FTP Option
AthleticLIVE can receive data from HyTek's Meet Manager by uploading reports via FTP. This method doesn't require any additional software to be installed on the computer running HyTek, and is ideal for people who will be doing just a few meets per season. Your first step will be to configure HyTek to communicate with the AthleticLIVE servers.
MeetPro—Publish to Disk Option
The preferred method for uploading meet information from MeetPro is the Publish to Disk option, which publishes reports to a local folder on the computer running MeetPro. AthleticLIVE Local, the AthleticLIVE middleware software, watches the local folder for changes and uploads new data to AthleticLIVE. This option is preferred due to its speed, since MeetPro tends to upload large amounts of information for even small changes.
Before uploading meet information, you'll need to manually export both a team/roster list and an event list from MeetPro. Upload it to AthleticLIVE.
Once you make those uploads, you can then visit MeetPro's Publish to Disk interface to upload entries, performance lists, or heat sheets.
MeetPro—FTP Option
Before uploading meet information, you'll need to manually export both a team/roster list and an event list from MeetPro. Upload it to AthleticLIVE.
Once you make those uploads, you can then visit MeetPro's Publish to Disk interface to upload entries, performance lists, or heat sheets.
The Race Director—Direct Connection
As of October 1, 2022, you can now upload events, rosters, and results via a direct integration instead of using FTP. We recommend moving to this integration.
The Race Director—FTP Option
It's also possible to upload from Race Director via FTP.
RunScore
Athletic.net CSV Format
If you do not use one of our supported cross country meet management systems (HyTek, Meetpro, RunScore, and Race Director), you can still upload live results to AthleticLIVE.
Managing event-specific settings
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 do the following:
- Set distance, split names, and race start times for each event.
- Set split definitions for each individual event.
- Manually exclude teams from scoring if you know they won't field a complete team, or override scoring settings for a particular event. Click here to learn more about AthleticLIVE's scoring options.
Integrate with FinishLynx (Live XC Scoreboards)
If you use FinishLynx to time your Cross Country meets (either with or without a chip system), a live XC scoreboard will display race results in real-time as they are manually 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.
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.
Option 1: Use these configuration settings to set up a simple live cross country scoreboard using FinishLynx's scoreboard outputs.
Option 2: 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.
