Using StatCrews Career Reports

For my summer season, I took on the task of putting Greensboro Colleges athletics record books online via StatCrews career reports option.

Our current record books were done differently for each sport. Some were in MS-Word, others were in PageMaker/PDF or even just straight web pages. My goal was to make a more consistent looking record book that would be easier to update.

Getting Started: Archives Are Key

Your record book will only be as good as the information you have from past seasons to input into the career reports files. I was fortunate in that we have pretty comprehensive records dating back to the beginning our sports history.

That brings up another salient point. GC has only offered intercollegiate athletics since 1996. Moreover, most of our 16 teams were started within the last 15 years. This has made the data entry manageable and allowed me to successfully research missing records. A good suggestion is to attack this project on a sport-by-sport basis.

Finding Missing Games

A few sports had some holes to fill. Check with your fellow SIDs for missing box scores and results. Additionally, our local newspaper is archived in microfiche and we were able to find a number of missing results.

Generating Recent Season Information

Most folks have been using StatCrew products since 1999 or so. If you have the StatCrew season files for a sport, you will not need to input that season. Simply open the directory for that season within Career/Historical icon from the control panel and under capture highlight your team ID and enter the year. A file will be created with that years data.

In addition, you should highlight the capture game records under the same capture icon. This will generate the single game records for your team and student-athletes.

Entering Data BS (Before StatCrew)

Your institution likely used another statistical program or perhaps even entered a season box score by hand. If you have a completed report you can easily input it into StatCrew in about 20 minutes.

Under the Career/Historical icon from the control panel highlight Edit and Add New Season. Then input the team, opponent and individual stats for your team. Youll then be able to create a season box score and then an .html file for your website. You have successfully captured all the pertinent team and individual data to create season and career reports for that year.


Names Need to Reconcile

Be consistent when you enter your rosters. We use the LASTNAME, Firstname. After you generate your various reports, expect to find some student athletes not reconciling. One letter difference in names or using Billy instead of Bill will make the program believe that these are two different individuals.

To fix this, simply go back to the Edit tab and highlight Edit Season Data. Then fix the name to match the other season(s).

Important Re Names

You can also use the same Edit Season Data fix for recent seasons that you generated via the season stats capture feature. Theres something, however, that you need to keep in mind.

If you choose to fix names in Edit Season Data, if you run the season stats capture again for that season, your edits will not be there. Statcrew works off the current data in the folder. My suggestion is to clean up your seasons first. Make the names reconcile first then run the season capture.

There still may be reconciling issues, but likely fewer than before.

Single Game Records

Previously we entered the season data, but what about those all-important single-game records for those pre-StatCrew seasons?

If you have all the box scores, you could create the entire season in the manual entry mode. Then youd have boxes for each game, too.

A quicker routeor the option if you do not have ever game boxis to input into the Career/Historical. This information can be input via Edit and Edit Individual Game Records and Edit Individual Game Records.

Career Reports Quick Tips

-Players Not Appearing in Lacrosse/Soccer?: Players, goalies for the most part, did not appear in some of my reports. The reason? In addition to GK stats, you need to highlight the games played in the offensive stats for backstops in order for them to appear.

-Individual All-Time: As mentioned earlier, StatCrew is beefing up the reports offered in career stats. One important Report that I had to run, then copy to file, so it can appear on our website is the Individual Career Summary (All-Years). This great report lists alphabetically every player, lists year-by-year stats, and then career totals.

-Filling in the blanks: One thing Statcrew cant do is list your post season honorees: All-Americans, all-region, etc. I create an Ancillary Record Book for each sport to fill in the cracks. This document includes year-by-year results, coachs records, and honors. Due to using StatCrew for all the stats these are the only aspects of the record book I now need to do by hand.

Final Thoughts

Your reports are only as good as the data. You might be missing field goal attempts in a basketball season, or lacking assists for a lacrosse game. Remember that what you are offering is going to be a huge upgrade for your website and your programs as a whole.

One report is the Individual All-time feature. This generates a list (from A-Z) of every athlete in the database for that sport. In addition to all the other reports, your alumni will enjoy taking the trip down memory lane.

Final Thoughts: Part II

I am new to using the StatCrew historical feature and dont claim to be an expert for this powerful too. In recent years, StatCrew has focused on adding features (opponent history, for one) to the career options. Check with the other folks and StatCrew for possibilities with their program.

The feedback on the implementing career reports has been fantastic. I can now run a cap file during the season to see how close an athlete is to a given record. On selfish note, I will not miss doing my record books by hand.

Maybe that time saved can now be spent on the golf course. Please forward any additional tipson StatCrew career reports, or any other topicto the SID Board at: http://sid.s10.forumsplace.com/