A proven way to run a meet, now on every phone
Track meet software, with the playbook built in
I run middle school track meets, and I've written down how to run them well: who stands where, what they say, and when. The First Call Playbook is that method. The app is how it travels: every volunteer gets their part on their own phone, so your meet runs the way mine does.
Christopher FriendMeet Director
Meet day, today
Everyone is working from a different version of the day
The schedule is printed the night before and wrong by the first delay. The clerks don't know whether the 1st call went out. Coaches hunt for the heat their athletes are in. New volunteers stand in the wrong place because nobody told them where the right one was.
None of that is anyone's fault. A track meet is dozens of small jobs that have to happen in the right order, by people who do it a few times a year.
The First Call Playbook
My way of running a meet, written down once
Eight years and more than seventy meets taught me where a meet goes wrong, and what keeps it running: who works it, where each person stands, what they say, and when things happen. The playbook is all of that on paper. The app turns it into every role's pages, a guide filled in for the meet, and a picture of exactly where each person fits.
How it Works draws the meet for any role, live on meet day: this is the Clerk Helper's view, with their station highlighted and live counts from the heat board.
The method is the part that took eight years. The app is how it travels.
How the app carries it
So the method works without me on the field
Plan in minutes
Import the Athletic.net heat sheet. Every event, heat, athlete and hip number is read for you. Drag races into order and every time updates.
One shared record
Tap once and every phone knows. Starting a race moves the whole schedule; a sent heat updates the clerks, the announcer and the coaches.
A screen for every role
Each person scans a QR code and sees only their job: the announcer's calls, the clerk's heat board, a coach's own team.
A meet, start to finish
Follow one morning through the app
- Scan in
- 1st call
- Heats formed
- Heats sent
- The gun
- A delay
- Awards
Volunteers scan their codes at the clerk meeting. The announcer's 1st call shows up on the clerks' phones. Heats are formed and sent in heat-sheet order. The gun moves the whole schedule. A lightning delay moves it again, on every phone. Award names fill in from live results.
Who uses it
Nine roles, one meet
Roles in red have their own pages in the app. Roles in green get a printed guide and How it Works, so everyone is covered, phone or not.
For the meet director
Never wonder what's next
The menu is numbered in the order of the day: Plan, Print, On the Day, After. Each meet's Home page has the same steps as a checklist, and the steps First Call can see check themselves off.
- Runs on one laptop on the infield. Phones join over the venue's Wi-Fi.
- Athletes' names stay on that laptop. Nothing to install on anyone's phone.
- A printed version of every page, for when the signal doesn't reach.
- After the meet, a report shows how the day ran against the plan.
Pilot
Let's run a meet together
- Pick a meetA regular meet or a championship you're already running.
- Set it up togetherI'll import the heat sheet and print the codes with you, then run a 30-minute rehearsal with your volunteers.
- Run itFirst Call alongside your usual process. Paper is always there as a backup.
- Tell meWhat helped, what didn't, and what it would be worth to you.