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Valiant Ski Scoring 2009
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One day in 1992, the lady who scored ours meets for us got fed up (too many coaches carping at her) and quit. She had been scoring the meets by hand on an old Macintosh computer running a simple spreadsheet program. The responsibility of scoring the meets fell on me and I started to teach myself how to write macros in Excel in order to automate some of the sorting and data entry. In 1995 I published the first version of Valiant Ski Scoring. Over the years the program has evolved from that first 200kb effort written in the Excel 4.0 macro language, to the current Visual Basic project that is about 6MB and includes 75+ menu commands and 60+ dialog boxes that you interact with to produce race results.
Valiant has been used by high schools and ski areas throughout Michigan for several years now. Because it uses the familiar Excel interface, it is easy for volunteer parents and ski club boosters to get to know. Valiant provides numerous options for scoring both Alpine and Cross Country meets. Valiant Ski Scoring has been used to score Michigan State Regional Qualifiers and Michigan State Championship meets as well as Junior Varsity events involving over 400 racers. Approximately 60 high schools in Michigan use Valiant. The program does not require entering any "USSA" points or other registration numbers. The racers names are sufficient. Valiant does not require that you be directly connected to a timer. You may run time trials or other simple meets with a stop watch and manually enter the data into the score sheets. Valiant does not require the use of bib numbers but some functionality is lost if you don't enter bibs (some commands (including all the direct timer download commands) require the use of bib numbers because bibs are used as a search criteria to paste data to the score sheets). Valiant also utilizes the computers clock as a manual timer for training (not official races). There are start and finish buttons in the dialog box (for dual courses if required) and the times go directly to the score sheets by bib number. Valiant also provides "League Totals" commands and "Individual Totals" commands that allow you to keep track of the race-to-race totals for your league and/or the individual members of your team. The League Totals and Individual Totals reside in separate Excel files that the program creates for you and the program allows you to update those files on a race-to-race basis. Discussing ski meet scoring is best handled over the phone (my e-mail address is on the Ordering page. Drop me a note and I will get back to you). I will attempt to give you a complete over-view of how Valiant works and I hope some of your questions can be answered here. When you create a race file, it is an Excel file that may contain up to 8 event score sheets (these score sheets may be "classes" of racers instead of separate event disciplines). Each event exists on its own spreadsheet within the file. The events are usually split into men's events and women's events (so that bib numbers and other information may be swapped between racers who appear in more than 1 event and for scoring tournament totals, etc.). When you save a race file, the race setup information and the racer data get saved within the file. When you re-open a race file, Valiant reads the race setup information from the file so it knows how to handle the data. Each Excel file therefore becomes a mini-database with its own set of rules for how the data is to be handled. When you "Create a New Race File" you fill in the Race Setup dialog box and the Excel file is formatted for your setup. You may then start entering team names (if you have a team tournament) and the competitors names. You can copy and paste information between different events. Seeding of the racers can be used to determine the number of racers in each flight. Valiant uses the Visual Basic random number generator to perform blind draws for start positions. Bib numbers can be automatically entered in whatever order you want, according to how the sheet is sorted when you ask the program to insert bibs. Bib numbers from 1 to 9999 are supported. (Bib number "0" is reserved for fore-runners when utilizing direct timer downloads). (Some timers only support up to bib number 999.) Valiant has options for sorting the data (usually done pre-race) in several different ways allowing several different "forms" for you to use either on-hill (for starters and recorders etc.) or as inserts in your printed race program. You can print the Scratch Sheet forms for each event and set them out for coaches to make their late changes on. You then enter the changes into the event score sheets in the race file. When manually entering times, all run times (or starts and finish times) are entered as integers and the program correctly formats the numbers as times. DNS is entered with the <F8> key, DNF with the <F9> key and DSQ with the <F10> key. For scoring purposes, DNF and DSQ are treated as being equal and receive a score equal to the "number-of-successful-racers +1" (Minnesota scoring is somewhat different). Manual data entries are checked (when you hit the enter button) to insure that they are "times" or "DNS" or "DNF" or "DSQ" (this reduces typographical errors). If you are timing an event with a PTB, the Alge timers, or the MicroGate, Valiant provides you with the "Control Console" dialog boxes that allow you to run the event on the computer (use the Timer Communication link on the left to view the dialog boxes). The start and finish events recorded by the timer are sent to the computer where Valiant relates the times to bib numbers and places the information into the spreadsheet. The Control Consoles provide you with automatic running orders for up to two courses. If you are using a CP520 (or a CP705 for dual courses) you must manually enter the bib numbers on the timer and the times and bibs are passed along to the computer. Alternately, you may use a CP705 as a PTB and run dual courses on the computer. This allows automatic bib entry in the Valiant Control Console and bypasses the CP705's inability to upload dual course run orders. Since the CP520 and CP705 allow you to enter bib numbers into the timer, you run the event/s on the timer and the computer simply records the times and pastes them into the spreadsheet. All starts, finishes, false starts, false finishes, DNF, and DSQ information (along with the related bib numbers) get sent to the computer where the event score sheets get searched for the bib number and the correct entry is made into the correct cell on the sheet. The CP705 can also be used for dual courses (the timer does not support uploaded start orders in Dual Sequential mode). Uploading Cross Country start orders to the CP705 is easy, even if you want the timer to dictate the start time of the event. The group size and the start interval between groups is up to you. The PTB, Alge, and MicroGate timers simply send times to the computer. Therefore when using one of these timers you will run the race from the Valiant "Control Console" dialog box on the computer. These timers are supported for dual courses as long as the timer itself supports dual courses. Cross Country events on the PTB, Alge, and MicroGate timers are handled by a different Control Console designed specifically for cross country events. The Cross Country Control Console also supports automatic group starts as well as start intervals. Gang finishes can also be resolved (Valiant remembers un-associated finish times and a dialog box allows you to make an association between any on-course bib number and one of the un-associated finish times). Duplicate times are also supported. Valiant provides a dialog box for setting the internal parameters of the PTB605/606. The Valiant "Alpine Control Console" dialog box allows you to send net time and bib information to the PTB's printer on the fly (as each finish time comes into the computer the bib number and net time get sent back to the PTB printer so you always have hard copy of the race data). The Valiant "Cross Country Control Console" sends bib and start data back to the PTB printer, and then will send the bib number and finish time to the printer along with the bib number and net time. Since Excel and Valiant can be multi-tasked you can have more than one timer connected to the computer and you can download data from both of them concurrently. That means that even though a timer like the CP520 has a single start and finish circuit, you can use two CP520's with one computer to time dual courses (your computer will have to be equipped with two serial ports). The times get placed into different race files and a command in the Valiant "Utilities" menu will transfer the information from one file into the other so you can score the event correctly for tournament totals. Multi-tasking two timers has been tested with one timer connected to the computer serial port and the other timer connected to a USB port. There are several options for scoring Alpine events. There are options for single runs, best run of two, and for total of two runs. Cross Country event scores are calculated by subtracting the start time from the finish time. There are additional scoring options for tournament totals (adding scores from different events to determine a tournament champion) and for combining the scores for individuals from different events. If you have qualified individuals competing along with members of teams, Valiant will ignore those qualified individuals when calculating team scores. The data is never lost, but registration is handled in such a way that the program can tell which racers are qualified individuals. There is also an option for mandatory gender scoring that can recalculate all team's scores so as to insure that at least one female (the number of females is an option) is included in the team totals. If you run a beer league or if you run different classes of racers and don't know ahead of time who will be in the starting gate, Valiant allows you to manually enter bib numbers into the Control Console dialog boxes. The timer's starts and finishes will be recorded for that bib number. Regarding Classes of racers...Valiant allows you to have a master file that includes all your racers. After they have run, and all times have been entered, you can open a separate race file that has the racers split into their classes, import the data (using a menu command) from the master file, and score each class separate from the rest. The race results are nice looking and easy to understand. When you E-Mail the Excel file to newspapers they can open and view the file even though they don't have Valiant installed. The files are after all, ordinary Excel ".xls" files. Speaking of E-Mails, you can send a blank race file to each coach, have them fill in their racers and then e-mail the file back to you. It is then a simple matter of copying and pasting to get the racer's names into your working race file. Valiant Cross Country and Ski Scoring is a full featured, robust ski scoring program. It is also a program that you will recognize immediately because it uses the familiar and powerful Excel interface. When you need to change something or make a manual entry, its a piece-of-cake. The Copy and Paste functions of Excel allow you to quickly copy data from one event sheet to another. Using the same race file week to week is no problem. You can do a Save-As and then use the "Clear All Times" command from the Utilities menu. Make a couple of scratch changes and your race file is ready for another race. Everyone runs races at least a little differently. The various options in Valiant should allow you to run a tournament pretty much the way you always have and also allow you to keep track of the performance of individuals on your team and the teams in your league. |
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Greg Foresi Valiant Ski Scoring, Ski Scoring Software, Valiant Cross Country and Ski Scoring, Valiant XC & Ski Scoring, Ski Scoring Software, Minnesota Ski Racing, Michigan Ski Racing, Alge software, tag heuer software, ski racing software, alpine racing software, ski meet software, cross country, ski tournament software Microgate Racetime 2
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