A step-by-step overview of the entire operation of registration, category setup, time recording, and scoring was found in Chapter 2. Here we'll just review the scoring aspects of the software, and elaborate on your various options. We assume that categories have been setup, that the Address Book contains all the racer information, and that the PocketTimer software has recorded all the times (or some fraction of them) and the bib#'s have been reviewed vs. the captured tags to ensure their accuracy.
At this point (you may have already done this too, prior to scoring) you'll either tap the Get Names button on the bottom of the screen or select Import Names from the menu and the names and other racer information will be read in from the Address Book.
Before you read the times, you may want to review the criteria by which the race will be scored. Tap on Categories in the Import menu, and pay attention to the bottom half of the screen:
In most cases, you'll have All Racers checked, which means that when the times are imported and the race scored, the software will pay attention to all the racers in the database as it matches up the times and performs the scoring. In some cases, you may have assigned particular race numbers. For example, perhaps you run a series of races, and last week you used numbers 200-345, and this week you assigned numbers 400-590. Just to make sure there isn't anyone left in your database from last week, if you set to Score Race Using Bib #'s from 400-590, only those racers will be used, so any old Bib#'s left in your database will simply be ignored. The final option, discussed in the Categories chapter, occurs if you are scoring multiple races simultaneously. In this case, check the last box, and select the race you want to score first. Later, you can return to this screen, tap another race #, and when you tap Done to return to the main screen that new race will be automatically scored.
Once you have got the names ready and the type of scoring you want to do set, tap on the Get Times button if it appears on screen, or select Import Times from the menu. You'll see this screen:
In most cases, the pair of boxes checked in the example above will be the most appropriate - import All Times, and Clear existing times first. If you have already scored part of the race (the first half of the finishers, for example, then the other pair might be appropriate - Append to existing times, and only import times whose times lie between certain limits. For example, if the first 40 minutes of finishers have been imported and scored already, you can check the second box and import only times From 40:00 to 1:20:00. The software will still re-score the entire race, but limiting the times which are imported does make the step of importing the times themselves go faster.
There are two other options on the Import Times screen you may wish to use. If, when importing times from PocketTimer, RaceBase finds more than one time listed for a particular bib#, you can instruct the software to use either the shortest time or the longest time. This can be of use in a two-lap race, or in cases where there is a two-person relay where both racers cross the finish line. Finally, another situation which may occur is that there are times recorded in PocketTimer which have either no bib#, or a bib# which doesn't correspond to anyone in the racer database. If you check the Ignore times of unknown racers box, those times will be ignored; otherwise, they will be scored as unknown racers, appearing in the overall placings but not in the category placings (since an unknown racer will not have a known category).
When all the times have been read, RaceBase will automatically score the race, that is, adjust the times for both category (e.g., wave start, if any) and individual (if any) handicaps, sort the racers by overall finish, age group placing, team scoring (for cross-country races), etc. The results will be displayed on screen, like this:
You'll see all the results as shown here; if there are more results than fit on the screen, scroll arrows in the lower right corner of the screen will let you scroll up and down the results. On the top line is the category selector. In this example, it reads Overall, which means that all finishers will be displayed. In road race scoring, you can use this pop-up menu to select from each of your different categories ("M40-49", etc.), as well as four additional choices - Overall, Overall Male, Overall Female, and Uncategorized. The first three are self-explanatory; the last choice lets you display all the entrants whose category did not correspond with any of your categories. Almost always, this will indicate a problem with your information - either the category for an individual racer in the Address Book was omitted or misspelled, or else a category in your category list within RaceBase was omitted or misspelled. Since the results won't be correct until there are no racers who are "uncategorized," you'll want to make sure you correct your data and then re-import it into RaceBase. Note that you can (and should) do this at the stage when you have just done the Import Names step; you need not wait until the final step (Import Times and scoring the race).
By toggling from one category to another, you can actually announce results directly off the screen of your PalmPilot, without any need for hardcopy output. If you want to be able to announce more details about each racer, an additional racer detail screen is available. Just tape the name of any racer in the list above, and this screen will appear:
This screen shows you the complete details which are useful for announcing results - name, city, age, time, pace, and place overall, place by sex, and place by category (in addition, you'll see the name of the sex and the name of the category). And finally, you see a Note button; tap that and you'll see any of special note which was attached to that racer in the registration database ("Last year's winner", etc.). At the bottom you see Previous, Next, and Done buttons. Previous and Next let you scroll through the database, examing (or announcing) each racer in turn; Done returns you to the main screen.
If you are scoring a high-school or college cross-country meet (and have indicated that choice in the Settings window), the selector menu on the top line of the main window will only have two choices - Individual and Team. Individual acts very much like what has been described above, displaying results for the individual runners. Team shows you only the team names, scores, and placings. The only subtle point comes when a team hasn't finished enough runners (5) in order to have a full score. In that case, the team name and score will appear in the results, but with an asterisk (*) next to the score to indicate that it is an incomplete score.
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