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The gathering and uploading of results for members of athletics clubs can be very complex as there are such a variety of events that can be conducted. This page outlines how different athletics clubs are handling the challenge of posting results online.
These days, bodies such as British Athletics (see Power of 10 website) and Athletics Victoria provide online access to the results of sanctioned events. Registered athletes are able to look up individual or event results. However, these systems sometimes do not provide a 'club wide' search of results, so it can be difficult for a club to publish the results of all the events that members participate in online. Another problem is that members can compete in separate 'non-sanctioned' events - that are not listed on the major sporting body websites. It can therefore be very difficult for athletics clubs to even keep track of what events their members are entered in, let alone publish the results of such events.
Here are some of the strategies used by athletics clubs to manage this. There appears to be no ideal solution that works for all clubs. It is a matter of selecting the options that best suit your club:
Refer members to the major sporting body website. This is just a simple matter of providing a link on the club's website or in social media posts to where the scores are located. Members can then look up the results themselves. This is by far the simplest and least 'labour-intensive' solution. The disadvantages are that the club does not report events on a 'club wide' basis and results from non-sanctioned events are not shown.
Re-use results prepared for other purposes.
One example of this is where UK clubs submit their results for sanctioned events that they conduct to Power of 10. Since reports are already prepared for this purpose, some clubs reformat them and either post them onto their website or on social media. Again, these results are limited to sanctioned events (and those that the club is involved in).
Some clubs also summarise their results for local newspaper reports and either post these reports online or provide a link to the online newspaper report.
Ask members to inform the club when they enter other events. Sometimes club do not even know when a member enters and participates in non-sanctioned events. Some clubs encourage their members to inform them when this occurs, but the success of this depends upon members actually doing that.
Search the web. Probably the most comprehensive online results on club websites are provided when someone from the club actively searches the web for member results and then compiles them into regular results displayed on the website. This is very time consuming and is generally a 'labour of love' by the person doing it. Here are some examples of what some clubs are doing:
Results from the major sporting websites are cut and pasted into a club results summary which is then posted online. This occurs by individually searching the main 'sanctioned' results website for member results.
Volunteers from some clubs actively search the Internet to look for member results, especially when they know that elite athletes within their club are performing in other cities or even overseas. This can also occur when they know they members are competing in non-sanctioned events whose results are posted online.
Some volunteers even use their local knowledge to source results from newspapers, etc to post online.
Automated measuring systems. If a club is conducting or involved in non-sanctioned events it is helpful if they have access to automated measuring systems, such as an automatic timing system that can record lap times using technologies such as RFID tags. Here is a very basic video demonstrating how the technology is applied on a large scale. Whilst this generally requires some technical knowledge to set these systems up, there are some athletics clubs who have their own automated measurement systems which are capable of uploading results to their web presence.
Personal results. Clubs are now starting to set up their own web page on services such as Strava, which allow members to record their own performances on an informal basis throughout the week. Strava can use smartphones and other tracking devices (eg smart watches) to track time, distance covered and other measurements.
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