Database Update: Over 20 Years Of Track

Wednesday, January 21 2009


 We made some good progress over the last weeks of Christmas break and these early weeks of the spring semester on the EIU Track & Field Database.  We are now back to 1987, have over 16,000 Results, nearly 600 Athletes, and nearly 700 Meets.

Aside from just results, all the videos from the past 3 years are now online, as well as FAT pictures, and full results (pdf's).  The Photocenter has continually grown with the addition of pictures spanning back to 1988 at this point, and that will continue to grow as we reach further back in time.  Team Media Guides, and other team documents are also being scanned in.  We are in the process of acquiring old videos from 1986 - present, and hope to load those on the website as well.  We have a limited selection of video currently, but its still fun stuff to watch.  Also, for each meet in the past 10 years, we hope to be able to scan and post the full results packets.

Other improvements that have been made include the ability for alumni to enter any post-collegiate race results they have, and those results will be shown on their roster page.  And Alumni can also enter a 'status update' on themselves, and let other alumni know what they are up to, and such.  These options are all available on the alumni page.  We hope to continue to grow the alumni section of the site.

Improvements we are currently working on include site search ability.  Currently there is no good way to search for an athlete or meet, etc...  We hope to implement and site search within the next month that will allow anyone to search for an athlete, or athletes that went to certain high schools, search for a meet, or meet location, and so on.

If you have ideas for other improvements we could make on the site, please contact us.

And as always, if you find errors on the site, PLEASE let us know.  No matter how small the error is, even if on your roster page, your high school is spelled wrong, please tell us.  We are trying to create an accurate and consistent database.

steepleweb Atkinson
Project Leader

Almost all the actual work has been accomplished by the following:

Nic Atkinson, Brad Butler, and Kyle Swynenburg