Regatta Draw Checklist

The draw/timetable is a key component that contributes to the smooth running of a regatta. As such it is important that errors/inconsistencies are picked up at the earliest opportunity. Oar-Online helps by ensuring that all data contained within reports is properly displayed and carried forward where appropriate.

The following are things that should be checked prior to publishing the draw.

Club Names

Club names are imported from BROE using the two different names it provides for each club. These are mostly usable but do tend to be slighly too long for use in the draw reports. The club names can be checked from the Entries -> Club Names screen.

Adjust any names to suit the competition house style. In particular some of hte Durham Colleges have "(Durham)" in the name and these can often be removed for local competitions.
Make sure that composite clubs have shorter names. The slash separated names imported from BROE tend to be too long for display in the draw.
Provide a short name for any clubs that have longer names. This will be automatically used where the combination of crew name and club name approaches/exceeds the space available in a report.

Note it is possible to save the house style names for clubs for reuse in subsequent competitions. This procedure is not documented yet but in brief export the previous years ClubsTemplate.json file from the Tools -> Setup Templates screen of the previous competition. Then in the current competition upload this file on the BROE Import screen. Once uploaded any subsequent imports from BROE will use the club names template in preference to the names provided by BROE.

Events

BROE provides event names information and primarily only supplies the short name for each event. In addition the new Competition Framework provides less structure to the format of short names and also has the added complication of event banding. Event names can be conveniently edited using the Entries -> Event Names screen.

The short names are as provided by BROE but these may be too long for some reports and may need slightly abbreviating.
The long names are derived using heuristics based on the short name. These are likely to need significant copy editing especially now that the Competition Framework does not specify a standard set of status levels.
At present the BROE import procedure does not include a band identifier within either short or long names. This is important to ensure that it is clear from the draw which band is which. It is often convenient to include a suffix such as (b1) or (1) on the short name.
Check that Masters event short codes include the ages of all crews involved in the event. This is very important for umpiring purposes.

Consider removing any unused events. The best way to do this is to find the relevant entry in the BROE event import screen and to mark it for deletion. This will only remove it if there are no crews/races associated with the event. It is also possible to do a bulk remove from the Tools -> Administrative Operations screen but that should only be done immediately prior to baselining the draw when you are confident that all events are present.

Check that events have been ordered as appropriate for the competition. The default sort order will be acceptable for most purposes but do be careful to check that banded events have been placed in the correct order. View the order on Entries -> Event Order . Use drag and drop to correct any bad ordering.

Once the order is correct event numbers can be assigned via Entries -> Number Events . The numbers are assigned in the event sort order. Note that once numbers are assigned the sort order can be changed but numbers will not change and some events may appear out of order. This is generally not what is wanted but there are a few specific situations (Durham Regatta) where it is used.

Crews

Crews need checking for a few common issues.

Crew name capitalisation. The imported data has considerable variation and inconsistency in the formatting of names.
Masters ages. The Entries -> Masters Worksheet allows the age codes of each masters crew to be checked. Due to limitations in the BROE export data the crews are imported using the actual age based on the current crew members. This may not quite match the entered age and hence should be checked closely.

Draw Completeness

It is important to ensure that all crews are included in the draw and that every event has been drawn appropriately. The Entries Dashboard gives a good overview of things.

Events with Only One Entry - this field should have a zero value. It would not be possible to race an event with only one crew.
Crew Count - this should match the live crew count as reported by BROE. It maybe that scratchings need to be taking into account in the BROE numbers too. Any discrepancy between the BROE and Oar-Online numbers should be fully understood and ideally eliminated.
Parially Drawn and Undrawn events - this indicates that at least one crew is not included in the draw.
Entries, Events and Races not assigned to a division. This would be very unsual for a regatta organised using divisions. Again fully understand where any discrepancies come from.
Number of races - for a two lane competition the expected number of races is the Crew Count number minus the Event Count number. This should equal the number of Races listed in the Draw Stats table.

Race Scheduling

Race timetabling is not an exact science and there are always compromises that need to be made to get the best, workable timetable possible. The key is to minimise the number of short turnaround times between rounds or between doubled crews. The Races -> Information screen provides a springboard to view things.

Generally tight turnarounds are undesirable in early rounds because of the knock-on that they can have on the whole draw. They may be unavoidable in later rounds and even then often only occur if specific crews get through to finals of multiple races.

Close Doubling - this give lists of crews whose race schedule breaks the minimum gap constraints set on the screen.

Each affected crew is listed along with all the other crews that it is somehow directly doubled with. Potentially problematic races are shown in bold and the other races are shown for information. When the problematic races are semi-finals and finals it is common for the same race to be listed against a number of crews.
General race timings - look over the overall timetable Races -> By Time to ensure that things look sensible. It is often sensible to pay particular attention to the start of the day and the start of each division to look for any crews/races that may cause concern in the first few races. For the most part tight turnarounds between divisions should have been caught by the timetable scheduling but this cannot always be guaranteed.
Full draw including spider diagrams. Again check here to make sure that Reports -> Full Draw all races and rounds look sensible. Any issues should have been picked up earlier but it never hurts to double and triple check things.