The First Call Playbook
A proven way to run a meet, written down once
Most meet software handles entries and results. The hard part of meet day is everything in between: getting hundreds of athletes to the right place at the right time, with volunteers who do it a few times a year. The First Call Playbook is how to do that, and the app runs it.
“A meet goes well when everyone knows what happens next, reliably, every time.”
That's what the playbook is for. The app is the easy part to copy; the method is the part that was worked out on real meet days.
The ethos
Seven ideas behind every meet
What's in a playbook
The whole way a meet is run, as one thing
| Part | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Roles | Everyone who works the meet, from the Meet Administrator to the field event crews. Some have app pages; the rest get a printed guide and How it Works. |
| Role guides and staffing | What each role does, when to arrive, which meeting to attend, the words to say; how many people each role needs and which schools supply them. |
| Stations | The path athletes take for track races, field events and awards, and who works each spot. |
| Tasks | What happens around every event: the calls, putting heats together, sending heats, the race starting. Who does each one, when, and how it's done. |
| Timing | Seconds per heat, minutes per field flight, and when the calls go out. |
| Timeline and script | The morning's meetings and announcements, and the announcer's script, copied into each new meet. |
For every volunteer
A guide that can't disagree with the app
Each role's guide is filled in for the meet: when to arrive, when its meeting is, which schools supply the role. Below the guide, Where You Stand and Your Tasks in the App are generated from the same playbook the app runs, so the paper and the phone always say the same thing.
Roles that don't use a phone, like the starter and the finish line helpers, still get their guide and How it Works. The staffing letter tells each school which roles it supplies.
Yours to adapt
Start from the original, change what's different
The First Call Playbook is the original, and it can't be changed. The first time a meet director changes anything, First Call keeps those changes in their own copy, and lists them in plain words: "100m: 80 → 70 seconds per heat". Any part can be put back to the original.
Set it once. What's different about one meet (no clerk helper today, a later start) is changed on that meet's own pages, not in the playbook.
Run it at your meet
The whole playbook, as a book and as the app
The Meet Manager's Handbook holds all of it: roles and staffing, the day, the tasks around every event, the stations, every role's guide and the timing. It comes with the pilot, along with the quick cards and a rehearsal with your volunteers.
