About

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Are you involved with running a youth swim team? If so – does it run efficiently? If your team is like most, a loose collection of volunteers run your swim team doing many things by hand or with Word and Excel documents. You may even have some of your information on the web.

Overview

wp-SwimTeam is a WordPress plugin which makes the job of running a swim team a little easier by moving many tasks typically done by hand or with Excel to the web.  WordPress is primarily known as a blogging platform but it can do much more than that.  When you combine WordPress with the wp-SwimTeam plugin, you have a platform which allows you to easily communicate with your team and simplify many of the tasks required to run a swim team.

Other solutions?

There are number of software applications (e.g. WinSwim and Hy-Tek Meet Manager) which help teams run swim meets and track times and results but finding a solution to manage the logistics to manage everything else, has been elusive.  If you are struggling with team registration, volunteers, scratches, and other similar aspects of running a swim team, wp-SwimTeam may help you out.

Why build on WordPress?

WordPress is a widely used publishing platform.  It is well supported, open source software which is easy to install, configure and deploy.  There is a wealth of add-ons to WordPress available for both new functionality (plugins) and presentation (themes).  Much of the work involved in running a swim team is communication and WordPress does this really well.

The other aspect, managing the data for the team, is accomplished with a plugin (wp-SwimTeam).  Instead of reinventing the wheel, wp-SwimTeam builds on top of WordPress and extends the data model so it can be used to capture swim team specific information.

Features

wp-SwimTeam is a WordPress plugin which supports the following features:

  • Electronic Registration for Parents and Swimmers
  • Each Swimmer can have two Parents and/or Guardians
  • Configurable fields for the Swim Team parent or guardian profile
  • Configurable fields for the Swimmer profile
  • Seamless integration with WordPress registration and login
  • Define and Manage Seasons
  • Define and Manage Age Groups
  • Define and Manage Opponent Profiles
  • Define and Manage Meet Schedule
  • Report Generator
  • CSV Export for Reports and Roster
  • SDIF (SD3) Export for Roster
  • Short Code for Google Maps
  • Short Code for Opponent Profiles
  • Short Code for Meet Schedule
  • Short Code for Flickr Photo Gallery

17 thoughts on “About

  1. Mike,

    is the plugin able to generate the hy3 entry roster file that hy-tek meet manager expects to see to import entries for swimmers?

    • The plugin can generate the undocumented Hy-tek .RE1 file (aka Registration File) which Meet Manager can import. If you’d like, I can send you a sample RE1 file for you to test with Meet Manager.

  2. We need to talk I see some great ideas and I think we can work together and maybe come up with a true solution to helping Swim Teams run better with our using Team Unify. If you are interested please give me a call

    DDD-DDD-DDDD ext DDD or email me if you want to chat.

    I am also a swim coach

    Mike Wolbert
    SpiderWeave.com

  3. Is it possible to get the alpha copy of flip turn? I will happily work on it, I am working on a software like that for my Club’s Summer Swim League! It would be greatly appreciated!

    • I have not worked on Flip-Turn in a while but all of the code is managed under a Google Code Subversion repository. As I recall off the top of my head, you have to run an SQL script to create the necessary database tables and there is a sample configuration file you’ll need to put the proper values in for it actually operate correctly.

  4. WOW! This is really cool! Masters swimming would love this, as would my triathlete team.

    Idea for you….make this generic and it would be a HUGE plugin. Make it for all kinds of teams–so not “swimmers” but “teammates” or “members”. Another options is for schools and homeroom moms needing class contact lists, parent signups, calendars etc. This is an awesome tool and effort!

    • Thanks for the feedback – although the plugin is designed for youth swim teams, there really isn’t anything preventing from using it for a Masters Team. I believe there is one team using it, at least there was a couple years ago. There would be some redundant due to the swimmer and user information being somewhat overlapped but that isn’t too much of a hassle. A swimmer profile has the ability to be connected to a WordPress user Id already so it is part way there.

      As for the general applicability to teams in general – I agree that a lot of the “parent” aspect of my plugin would apply however there is an awful lot of things to do with swim team that few other sports require except maybe track and field. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to do everything I’d like to do as it is now so I don’t see me making a general purpose plugin. That said, I have a plugin in development to support my daughter’s travel soccer team that I’ll start working on again soon now that her team is gearing up for the fall season. The soccer plugin would be pretty easy to adapt to something like an AAU basketball team but it doesn’t have the “parent” aspect of it like wp-SwimTeam does.

  5. I’ve spent the last couple weeks navigating the abomination that is TeamUnify and would like to contribute to this project. See, it turns out I’m a web application developer during the day, and recently started learning the WordPress ecology.

    Our major immediate need is for swim lesson scheduling & enrollment, so I’d very much like to discuss how to add this functionality into wp-swimteam. My first instinct is to fork the Teachpress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/teachpress/) plugin — which is also GPL — and adapt for swimmers’ purposes.

    I’ll keep an eye on this thread but will also contact you by email if that’s ok.

    • You are welcome to contact me via email at me at mpwalsh8 at gmail dot com. I am curious about your TeamUnify comments as our team is considering it for next year because there is a chance my last swimmer may not swim next summer and the Swim Team is worried about having a WordPress site without me around. I did tell them I wouldn’t be dead, just not at the pool all the time! 🙂

      I don’t know much about TeachPress so can’t give you any words of wisdom in that regard. I would think there would be plenty of WordPress plugins for scheduling and signup that would either meet your needs or be pretty close. I am trying to use Google Apps (docs, calendar, etc.) as much as I can for some new projects (Soccer Team, Middle School Sports, even Swim Team) as (a) they are free and (b) lots of people already use them so there is no learning curve. You can check out the plugin I wrote to use Google Forms within WordPress. We use it to sign up for school athletics booster club. I am also using Google Calendar Events for a couple projects as it is the best WordPress integration with Google Calendar that I have found so far.

  6. Hi Mike could you work with us on putting together a website for a swim team using wp-swim

    let me know best regards

  7. Hi Mike, I am updating a High School swim / diving website – trying to modernize it. The team website is built using WordPress and plan to continue using. I am currently looking at several plugins for maintaining the roster information, profiles, bio’s. I saw your plugin but wonder how robust and features/functionality? The key thing is picking one methodology and making sure the next parent can easily pickup. Do you have a mechanism for uploading Psych sheets and results? Is your plugin more suited to Summer swim programs or in other words do you think it would be good for High school?

    • Sorry, slow to respond here, was traveling for work all last week.

      I think one of the stronger aspects of my Swim Team plugin was/is roster management as long as you use WordPress and the plugin as your “golden” roster source. Trying to manage a roster in multiple locations is hard which was one of the main reasons I wrote the plugin in the first place. Taking the roster and getting swimmers slotted into the desired events was another key feature and I think it works pretty well. The ability to generate meet entry files in either SDIF or HY3 format is tremendously useful.

      While the target usage was definitely geared toward Summer Swim League Teams, the use model for a school is largely the same. The Volunteer aspect, critical for summer swim league with younger kids, probably isn’t as critical for a high school team but still may provide useful functionality.

      The big gap in the plugin is results. I never finished this aspect of it mostly because as my kids aged out of swimming and took on other activities, my volunteer efforts followed them. I haven’t had an active swimmer in about four years now so other than the occasional bug fix, I have not made any major improvements to the plugin nor do I plan to. At some point I will put it on GitHub so it could easily be forked and contributed to but it hasn’t made it to the top of my to-do list yet. All that said, the plugin has proven to be pretty stable and it is has been a while since I had a significant bug report.

      I am not familiar with a “Psych sheet” so unless there is another term for it, it isn’t something which is supported.

      Let me know if you want an account on the demo site so you can play with it yourself.

  8. Hello Mike – thanks for the information. Yes, if possible, can you send me the invitational code so that I can test the demo. I would appreciate.

    Regards,

  9. Hey Mike. Is it possible to get credentials for the demo site? I am testing for a youth triathlon club. Thanks in advance.

    • Yes – sorry for the delay. My web site was having an email issue which was preventing WordPress from emailing user account information. I have created you an account, check your email for it. You have just about all capability except Admin.

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