Monday, February 2, 2009

Rules - Checks and Balances

It seems we have checks and balances across all aspects of the meet officiating: alternating judges from both teams, 2 scorekeepers - 1 from each team, 2 clerk of course - 1 from each team...EXCEPT recorder. There were 2 seperate meets last year which involved the recorder writing down the wrong lanes for the various places. In what such meet, the lanes were not clearly numbered, the other was just a mistake. I'm not sure there's an easy solution, but it seems it would be wise to consider someway to balance the recorder. I'm posting here to solicit ideas and/or alert the rules committee to discuss.

1 comment:

Chip Conrad said...

Here is a suggestion from our meet organizer at Glenridge. I hope it helps.

The best method for making sure the recorder gets the info down correctly is for the place judges to gather around the recorder after the race. Starting with the 1st place and moving on down the line, each judge verbally provides the info (holding up fingers while speaking) and the place judges can watch the recorder write the info down. While encouraging place judges to stand in the lane of their finisher and having the recorder walks down the length of the deck might seem faster, we’ve found it is leads to more mistakes – especially if any of the judges (or the recorder) are new to the job. If the meet is otherwise well organized, it doesn’t slow it down. It also helps to recruit volunteers to the job who’ve done it in the past successfully. If a person is working recorder for the first time, try to recruit a seasoned volunteer to stand with them for the first main events. We’ve discovered that other mistakes are made if the recorder isn’t getting the pinks/blues fast enough. Although this is not commonly done in TSA, we find it helpful to keep a separate spreadsheet for the Clerk of Course of main event participants and pre-load all of the meets’ pinks/blues onto the recorder’s clipboard.