Using Takedown for the first time in live competition can be overwhelming. Here are three things you can do to get your scorers prepared for using Takedown in the live competition context.
1. Transcribe from Paper Scorebook
Copying matches from a paper scorebook is the first step. This context doesn’t have the pressure of a live situation so that the scorer can take their time and get familiar with the scoring interface. It also affords an opportunity to schedule and configure Events. The task should include a full dual meet and some tournament matches. The user shouldn’t be concerned with the match clock — just start it and enter the scoring, then move on to the next match. The goal here is to replicate the paper scorebook.
If you don’t have a paper scorebook handy, try this training exercise from our support site.
2. Score from Recorded Video
Any video recording of a wrestling match will do. It could be of your team or just some matches on YouTube. This is the next step-up in difficulty as the action is live but can be paused if necessary. Don’t worry about getting the names of the competitors correct. The goal of this task is to simulate the pace of live competition. Keeping the match clock accurate is an important skill development area.
3. Score Challenge Matches in the Practice Room
The last step, this is live competition without the pressure of a large audience and, perhaps, an impatient official. It’s a safe environment. In this task, all the skills developed in steps 1 and 2 will be tested at a live pace. In addition, the user should practice using the video recording feature.
In our experience, if your scorer follows these three steps, they’ll be successful when scoring and video recording live competition. When the training is done, you can simply delete the matches or events so that they don’t corrupt your analytics. You could also create a “Training” Season for all this activity and that would keep all the data separate from your competition seasons.
One Last Item
Add your managers/scorers to the Contacts portion of Takedown located at the top level in My Team. Doing this will add them to our mailing list so that they will be informed. When a manager/scorer moves on, they can easily unsubscribe from our mailing list.