I’ve been working on ski results for HS races in Anchorage ever since I started coaching in 1981. While things have changed, much is actually still the same! Coaches need to decide who is going to ski in what order, this information needs to be gotten to the volunteers who make a startlist, time the races, and prepare the results.

Tryon’s maxim: I don’t mind typing anything… ONCE! Over the years, I’ve been tweaking the process to make this happen. And the Results spreadsheet is the current version of it. Every little quirk to it has been put in to help the users perform as efficiently as possible. You should have seen how we did it on Apple IIs!

This is a hobby of mine – and I’m retired. If you would like some personal discussion on this, contact me and we can talk about it. I’m still a computer educator at heart…

So what I would do first. Download a copy of the results spreadsheet and open it up in Excel and make sure that the macro buttons are functional. If using a school computer and having trouble, you might check with the tech coordinator about software options. Apple users, you need Excel, not Numbers.

Second, I’d put my entire roster into the ‘Others’ worksheet. The grade level is optional, but I’d be careful with the spelling, the spacing, and that I’ve included everyone. The information in the green columns gets used by me and others through your entries, but all the blue columns, including the headers can be used by you for anything that you want. If you save this as a single worksheet, you can copy it into each results spreadsheet that you get after every race. (Click in the little square to highlight the entire worksheet, Copy, move to the new one, Paste.)

Then every week: 1) Copy and Paste your entire roster into the Others worksheet. 2) Enter your school name into cell G1, spelled the same way as in the results (should turn green). 3) Click ‘Clear non-single school’.  All but your skiers should disappear. 4) Click ‘Import other skiers’.  All of your skiers should now be on the Basic sheet. 5) Enter ‘a1, a2, c4’ etc. to build your teams.  Click the Sort by Sex, Seeds, Times as often as you want. Click Check Seeds as often as you want. 6) Delete the skiers who are not racing.  (Or put ‘xxx’ in for the seed.) 7) Save the file and e-mail it to the person doing start lists.