Behind the Scenes on PennTrackXC
The Mystery of the Dropdown Menu Revealed.
If you’re like most of the people who check out PennTrackXC religiously everyday, and often more than once, but don’t go beyond the front page story or the forum *raise my hand*, it’s time to take a short site tour.
Hidden under your very nose, collecting internet dust, are some pretty cool FREE or Subscriber-only features on PennTrackXC. The most overlooked option on the website so far seems to be the dropdown menus. Under those deceptive dropdowns on the homepage, are enough options to keep any runner and/or their coach or parent busy for a while.
The hidden ‘things’ behind those new dropdown menu things.
Dropdown menu #1
Home
Right here, right now. The homepage. Where you log-in.
Dropdown menu #2
Articles
Free Stuff
College Signings - You want to see where whats-her-name's older sister signed for college? Lists from 2001 to current year.
Announcements - Timely info of general interest.
Poll Results – from every poll conducted on the site since January 2005.
News - stories of current importance, including links to college and newspaper stories
Subscription-Only all the time, effective 2/1/07.
Meet Summaries, Results*, Features, Interviews, Videos and Event Rankings, along with most Photo Galleries (media center) Contains archives from XC 2003-Outdoor 2006 when new Photo Gallery database was created.
Older Archives - Contains archives from 2000-2003 for Features, Interviews and News.
*WHEN WE HAVE A URL FOR A MEET PAGE, WE ALWAYS PUT THAT LINK ON THE RESULTS PAGE. WHICH MEANS, IF THE MEET POSTS RESULTS ON THEIR PAGE, THOSE RESULTS WILL BE FREE. SO HAVING THE RESULTS ORGANIZED AND AVAILABLE ON ONE PAGE (PENNTRACKXC.COM), AND HAVING ACCESS TO MEET PAGES FROM ONE SITE, IS PART OF THE SERVICE WE PROVIDE – A SERVICE THAT MOST FEEL IS WELL WORTH THE LITTLE MORE THAN TWO BUCKS A MONTH. http://pa.milesplit.com/store/subscribeinfo.php#sub
Free all the time: Home Page, Announcements, Meet Pages, Forum, Meet Calendars, Athlete Profiles, Team Pages, RSS Feeds, Polls, State Event Leaders, Most Archived Elite Lists (see Elite Archives below)
Dropdown Menu #3
Rankings
The top performance in the state listing each season is always free. In-depth rankings by event are subscription-only
With a subscription, you can use the PA database which was started in 2003 to explore rankings in cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field. And road racing (although not too much action on that link yet).
Super subscription -only features!:
Select single events/distances. Compare up to six athletes side-by-side in multiple events (year, gender, sport. Then what distance. Click compare athletes and off you go).
Do you know the lineup for next week's race? Plug in those names and
see where you fit according to everyone's PR. Want to see who you would
fall between on Coatesville’s cross country team.. ?
Elite Standards. The cut-off times for being added to the PennTrackXC Elite list for each season and event.
How fast do you need to run to get a time added to your athlete page? Find out here.
Advanced Search: Specify the year, a zip code, a radius, and/or a graduation class for any event to create custom lists.
For example: want to know the top XC runners within 50 miles of Carlisle?...
Select Advanced search, enter 17013, a radius of 25 miles and plug-in
gender, sport, and 5K under event, and you have your list.
Want to narrow it down to the top returning sophomores, then
enter a grad year for that class.
Elite Archives - aka the Penntrack "Hall Of Fame"
Worth the time to explore...
All performance lists from XC, indoor and outdoor since 2001 (Subscription-only)
PTFCA's All-State teams since 1999
(most) PTFCA Top Ten Lists since 2001
All-Time state bests for indoor and outdoor
PIAA Team Champions since 1978
All-Time PA Boys/Girls Foot Locker Qualifiers
Dropdown #4
Meets
PA meet results since 2003 (11 pages just for 2006!) (Subscription-only effective 2/1/07
Archived Calendars, Meet Summaries, Results since 1999 (and growing).
Meet Summaries since 2000 - Subscription-only
Photo Galleries since 2003 - Free
Calendars of every meet for each season - Free
Dropdown #5
Camps/Clinics
Current T&F Camps and Clinics
Current Cross Country Camps
Dropdown menu #6
Forums - Free
Probably the most frequented spot on the site. A place for you to go ask who's running in the race this weekend, post a rough workout, debate whether or not Alan Webb is more hardcore than Lauren Fleshman, and everything in between. A rumor mill at times, sometimes educational, and always very entertaining.
Main Pennsylvania Forum - In addition to one of the most intuitive Forums available, you can send private messages, post your icon, acknowledge friends, manage your profile.
Personal Training Blog - As cool as it sounds - make it private, share with friends or make it public, you can keep your training online with everything from the weather, activity, terrain, training type and distance, to tracking intervals, adding comments, naming your routes and even monitor your shoes. When you sign-in, the link is at the top right corner, between Profile, and messages.
Coaches-only Forum (request admission by emailing don@PennTrackXC.com)
National Forum - Talk with athletes from other MileSplit Network states
Dropdown menu #7
Store
Subscriptions - Help Don and Gayle keep the site going and growing...
Advertise - You Don't have to be Yahoo or Google, just $35, a fun ad, and you're on the front page!
Classifieds are $10/month for 40 words
Jobs Needed/Wanted Classifieds are FREE for PA coaches/high schools
Ads on other pages such as Calendars, Forum, Results, etc. are $25/month
Drop down menu #8
Resources
Conversion Calculator! Convert Metric to English and English to Metric for Field marks, and Distance marks to similar distances. Way too much fun.
Track Links - Tons of useful links for youth/high school athletes, collegiate stats, Post-collegiate, open XC and Road Racing, Running Clubs, Elites Lists, and T&F and PA Newspapers. Everything.
Race Tab - Simplified Meet Management Software by MileSplit. Free for XC, T&F meets and Road Races with less than 100 athletes. Just $99 for unlimited numbers of athletes and teams.
- Export as CSV, HTML, Agate
- Import CSV/tab delimited file from Excel and convert to HTML
- New in 2007 - now meet management can upload their results which will
be free for a week after the meet
Dropdown menu #9
Help!
Login Help page (or just email don@PennTrackXC.com)
A short history about PennTrackXC.com
Submit Meet Results - An easy-to-use form for exactly that. Coaches like this one.
Also links to advertisements and sponsor information, just like the Store and Sponsors dropdown.
Verify Schedule - An easy-to-use form for, you guessed it, letting PennTrack know about a meet that needs to be entered into the calendar
Privacy Policy (every real operation needs one of these. But does anyone ever read it?)
Site Tour - You're on it.
Dropdown menu #10
Sponsors
The people and organizations who supported Don when he started to turn the site from a "very cool hobby into a very cool job. I think of them every day".
A special thanks to the PTFCA for keeping this alive at a critical point in 2004.
Dropdown menu #11
PA Teams - Free
Links to every PA team page on the site - Coaches (or their designee) can have free access to their team's page to set up rosters, schedules, post results, private team articles, photos, school logo... and more. Each athlete has their own Profile Page, too, connected to the team page.
For extra info, email don@PennTrackXC.com
Dropdown menu #12
News FeedsRSS Feed of Pennsylvania T&F and XC News
Newspapers can directly publish article links on the site Journalist-Only Publishing
It's a journalist-only tool to allow the sportwriters in our states to privately access and publish links to their articles they write on track & field and cross country. It builds traffic for the network, and traffic for the newspaper sites.
There you go. You’ll never be able to use the excuse “Wait, what? Where was that? I didn’t know that was there” again. Thanks for coming along on this tour, I hope you learned something you didn’t already know about PennTrackXC. Best of luck navigating the site from now on.