Organising an open track meet

FatboyBrian

<p>Hi there</p><p>My club are looking at organising an open track meet for the first time. Can anyone recommend any definitive sources of information on how we go about this as we have had conflicting information from different bodies.</p><p>Can I also ask a very simple question – are officials at events generally paid or is it a volunteer role (plus expenses etc).</p><p>Any help would be much appreciated</p>

Dustin

Hi
We host a number of different events each year (young athletes, club championships, open meets). I assume that your club are already involved in track/field leagues, if so I imagine you'd have a team manager that will liaise with other competing clubs.
Or are you proposing to hire a local track to put this event on?
As a rule, each club in a track meet would supply a number of officials anyway. Is there anyone in your club that is involved in officiating? 
Are you planning a day meet or evening meet? Photo finish or manual timing? In general, officials are volunteers.
Your best bet would be to talk to other local clubs that host a well established event.
Let me know if you need anymore specific info

FatboyBrian

Hi Dustin

thanks for your comment. We have a local local track we will hire for the event.  We are relatively new to t&f as a club so don't have any qualified officials - therefore would be looking to source them from other clubs / volunteers.  We have looked at training some officials ourselves but there are relatively few courses available.

Not quite at the stage of confirming timing arrangements yet - do you know how expensive photo finish systems are to hire in?  Any more specific help would be really appreciated

thanks.

Brian 

Dustin

There are probably a number of qualified officials that may be willing to assist: timekeepers, track and field, but you'd probably want to look at getting a meeting manager on board first, plus a track ref and a field ref.

Bear in mind most officials book up their events in advance, so most would have a list of T&F already in their diaries for this summer. I'm a qualified timekeeper & get a list from my county association in February/March and advise what ones I can/will do before the season has started and that don't clash with races/events I'm competing in.

You can hire photo finish from clubs that have their own or there are a few 'independents' who offer their services. Roughly your looking at around £400-500 for a day's hire but depends how far they have to drive. It depends on what events you're going to do too. Sprinters for example will travel a bit further for photo finish rather than manual time, and if it's for juniors they're probably not fussed either way.

There will be a lot of start up admin, but once established , timetables need just a few tweaks to cover numbers. Also be careful not to have conflicting events (long jumpers are often sprinters too.
Cheekiest way is to take a look at a few other club's websites and timetables.