Winston-Salem indoor nationals: AWOL on entry information

JDL Fast Track is hosting nationals March 20-22.

If you click on Status of Entries for 2015 indoor masters nationals, you see age groups and events — but not a single name. “No registrations,” says every page. It’s not for lack of interest. It’s for lack of an entry form. With 10 weeks before the first event, Winston-Salem offers no way to register. The “Entry form” link on usatf.org goes to the page shown below. I wrote the outdoor meet director at last year’s nearby nationals, and Monday he replied: “I’m forwarding your question to Bonny Bernat and meet management.” Masters Mole 2344J writes: “Oddly enough, for a meet of this importance there seems no way at this date to become a participant (no method of entering through USATF). The larger question is whether the facility is ready for such a big masters event.” Moreover, the “major meets” section of usatfmasters.org, has no link to the meet. What’s the holdup, guys?

Here's what athletes see when they try to enter indoor nationals (minus my red note).

Here’s what you get when trying to enter indoor nats (minus my red note).

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January 9, 2015

17 Responses

  1. tb - January 9, 2015

    I was able to log in as if I were registering.

  2. Peter L. Taylor - January 9, 2015

    Still no entries as of 8:41 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Friday, but there has been a big change since yesterday. When you go to “Entry Form” you do get something useful rather than a message saying that registration hasn’t started yet.

    Thus, per the posting of tb (above) and my own experience this morning, it looks like the meet is ready to go. I will report back at 5:00 PM EST today; I hope there will be at least 15 entries at that time.

  3. Thad Wilson - January 9, 2015

    I just registered and received my conformation email at 0630 PST.

  4. Michael Daniels - January 9, 2015

    As of 10:17am Ohio time, I see one name so it must have been fixed this morning. “Thad Wilson is the first to arrive”. (Just to borrow a quote.) As usual I will register late to make sure I am still healthy at the time.

  5. Michael Daniels - January 9, 2015

    Hay Thad I must have been typing my comment when your comment appeared. Hope to see you at the meet. I’ll be in the M65 group this year, Ya!

  6. Susie - January 9, 2015

    Speaking of website, usatf.org doesn’t have this year’s calendar updated either, nor the indoor TV schedule. What gives?

  7. Rick Easley - January 9, 2015

    When I entered the registration page it lists every event as a $50 entry fee, but on the paper form the first event is $20 and $17 for each additional event. What is up with that?

  8. Rick Easley - January 9, 2015

    There is a $25 usatf committee fee but that is separate.

  9. Mary Harada - January 9, 2015

    They finally put up a page about hotels and I notice that one is filled up already- really ?? and the shuttle goes only from one hotel – are the others close at hand. I have no desire to rent a car (should I enter the meet) and it would be nice to know if the shuttle picks up only at the one hotel and if one can walk to that place (assuming one is not staying there) without risking life and limb.
    I am still dithering about attending and such things make it a bit easier to say “forget it” and stay home.

  10. Peter L. Taylor - January 9, 2015

    At 5:05 PM EST we had 7 entrants, who entered a total of 18 events (2.57 per athlete). Over the years I have found that one can use 2.3 events per athlete to make good projections of the total number of entrants. I plan to use that rule down the road.

    As far as a final goal, how does 900 entrants sound? Landover, in 2013, continues to hold the record (as far I know) with somewhere between 1000 and 1050. In contrast, Bozeman (Montana), in 1993 I believe, had an unbelievably low “300” (actually an estimate).

    Mary, let me check that shuttle. OK, the host hotel (Village Inn Event Center) appears to be 5.87 miles from the meet. Based on my experience with the shuttle last summer, I am guessing that the shuttle will make several stops before letting off its passengers at the arena.

  11. Bill Newsham - January 9, 2015

    There’s still a few flaws. I sent an email couple days ago noting that while the schedule listed the Mile the Status page showed 1500m. That’s been corrected. The $50 for each event shows but it calculates the secondary event fees correctly…however, it doesn’t look like it’s tagging on the $25 Masters fee…so enter quick 🙂

  12. Jerry Bookin-Weiner - January 10, 2015

    The listing of every event as $50 but then calculating the final total using the fee structure as announced is a system flaw in the outsourced software package USATF uses. I’ve raised the issue with the national office for the past 2 years but apparently there isn’t an easy fix. Makes me wonder how hard Keith Lively (the guy who owns the company that runs the system, which is called Simply Register) has tried to fix it.

  13. Ken Stone - January 10, 2015

    Here’s how to see everyone entered at nationals at one time:
    http://www.usatf.org/Products—Services/Event-Registration-Status.aspx?e=104695

    At bottom, click “All events.”

    Then click “All divisions”

    Then “All” to display names.

  14. Peter L. Taylor - January 10, 2015

    Thanks for that, Ken. I’ve been using that approach for a couple of years, but the one thing I can’t get quickly is the number of different people, i.e., the number of actual entrants. When you’re counting entrants you have to make sure you don’t count the same person twice.

    For example, Thad Wilson is in 4 events, and in past years we’ve had some people in 10 events or more. It’s so easy to make a mistake with these prolific competitors.

    If there is a simple way to get the total number of entrants without scrolling through the entire list, I’d love to know about it.

    Anyway, at 4:00 PM EST today (Saturday) we had 13 entrants entered in a total of 28 events, or 2.15 events per person. With 2.15 being close to the historical average I will soon abandon a complete count of the different names and simply count the event entries and divide by 2.3 or 2.2.

    I’ll be announcing at Winston-Salem at both the nationals in March and the SE regionals in February, and thus I have a particular interest in getting good attendance down there.* I’ll report perhaps once a week until entries close.

    * I understand that both the 2016 and 2017 indoors will be in Albuquerque, which pretty much rules me out for those two championships.

  15. Mary Harada - January 11, 2015

    2016 and 2017 indoors both in Albuquerque – ugh – bad news for me as I do poorly at altitude not being a sprinter, jumper, or thrower and living at sea level. By the time it goes somewhere not at altitude i will have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I am not in any kind of shape to run indoor track this winter/spring – having not set foot on an indoor track for the past 2 years. Still dithering about W-S in March – dither dither dither.

  16. Milan Jamrich - January 12, 2015

    Registration and status of entries works. Just registered. Why are we nervous about it? Still two months to register…

  17. Peter L. Taylor - January 16, 2015

    As of 5 PM today we had 50 entrants. Entry closes in just 35 days, unless you want to pay a huge penalty.

    As I did last year, I will follow a simple marker, the number of people in the 400. At Boston we ended up with 158 listed, for Winston-Salem we have 5 in that event to this point. It will be another two weeks, however, before I can make a meaningful comparison with Boston (I do have notes from last year).

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