Thursday, July 15, 2010

XCStats.com, circa 2010

Each season rolls out new capabilities in XCStats and 2010 is no exception. Since we already had
just about every possible report for cross country, the focus in the off-season was building a complete
set of tools to help coaches manage and motivate their teams. We’ve added training logs, a team
management function to reduce the amount of time coaches spend on administrative tasks, a set of
interactive features that enables XCStats to be a team’s web site and, in the Spring, we’re doing track!
Here’s a quick summary.

The Stats – Our stats quiver has grown to something like 26 reports and 10 charts, but the best thing of
all is that coaches don’t have to load data to get them! Coaches just enter their season schedule and the
XCStats team does the rest. If you’re still doing stats by hand, this can save you tons of time. The focus
of the reports is improvement, not speed, so every runner’s achievements are highlighted.

Team Management - Based on a recent survey, (conducted right here on crosscountryexpress.com),
less than half of available coaching time is spent actually coaching! Most of the time is spend on
administrative tasks, statistics and communications. We’ve already drastically reduced the time
spent on stats and communications, so now we’re helping to minimize the administrative burden!

The new team management tools allow coaches to assign tasks, such as turning in forms, money or
checking out uniforms, and record their accomplishment. Nothing fancy there – you can do that with
Excel. But the XCStats advantage is that it’s integrated with the email system and with the personalized
runner and parent pages. Literally with two clicks, a coach can send an email reminder to all runners,
with a copy to their parents, who are delinquent on a task. And, when the runner or parent logs in, they
see their list of uncompleted tasks. No excuses for missing a deadline!

Training Logs - We now have a full-function training log system built into XCStats! With just a few
clicks, runners can enter their workout information for coaches to review. Coaches can define standard
workouts and create reports and graphs showing runners weekly or cumulative mileage. The navigation
is designed so coaches can quickly review the logs of their entire team. It also includes tools to measure
and insure participation.

It can be your team’s website. Need a team website? XCStats can fit the bill! XCStats includes
a discussion forum, an email system, file uploads and a link uploader which provides the ability for
members to add links to your XCStats site for sharing articles, photos, videos and other content with the
whole community. And there’s virtually no maintenance.

XCStats is really catching on with California high schools. In our first three years of operation, we’ve
grown from 9 to 19 to 47 subscribing schools. Please consider joining us for 2010! We have a fantastic
offer for new subscribers of only $20 for the entire season, so you really have nothing to lose. Feel free
to write me with questions at mike@xcstats.com.

Mike Sherwood
www.xcstats.com

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