Points Table

For more than a decade, I oversaw results collection and calculations for the local recreational swim team’s yearly meet. I inherited the position from a parent who used paper, pencil, and calculator to figure out winners for medals and team standings. In my first year, I used an Excel spreadsheet with macros and drop-down lists to enter the results from time cards. While this system worked, we were always behind with event cards stacked up beside us.

In 2016, I wrote a Python program to do the calculations and another program for data entry. I called the solution Points Table. We switched from printing labels for the event winners with their times to labels for all participants with their events and times. I added a Raspberry Pi running Apache web server, and parents and swimmers could see results as we entered them. Our reward was hearing positive comments about how well we ran our swim meet and how nice it was to see the results as the events finished.

I have passed the torch to another parent to calculate the results for the 2022 swim meet. I have made Points Table available on GitHub (https://github.com/wareed1/PointsTable). With this writing, I am unsure whether the swim team plans to use Points Table for this year’s meet.