StatLap vs Squad Timing: thumb times or camera times
Squad Timing makes hand timing a team fast and tidy. StatLap replaces the thumb with a camera and a gun phone. The difference is the tenth you cannot see.
Squad Timing is a hand-timing app done properly: a roster, a lane per athlete, a big button per lane, results kept by meet. If your timing crew is three parents with phones, it is a real improvement on three stopwatches and a clipboard. It is still the thumb that decides the time.
What hand timing costs
A hand time is rounded up to the tenth for a reason: the reaction of the person at the line is inside the number, and it changes with who is holding the phone and what they were looking at. Two athletes a chest apart get the same time or the wrong order, and there is no picture to argue with.
What Squad Timing does well
- A team roster that persists between meets, with results filed against the athlete.
- Fast to learn. A parent can be timing within a minute.
- No setup on the day: no tripod, no camera height, no lane lines to check.
What StatLap changes
- The clock starts from the gun phone, not from a thumb hearing the gun.
- The finish is the camera frame the runner crossed on, with the frame kept.
- Lanes are read from the feet, so one phone covers the width of the track.
- A manual tap finish is still there, on the same page, for the day there is no tripod.
- Results post to a website the athletes can read, and export to MileSplit and Hy-Tek.
Which one
If the goal is a tidy record of hand times, Squad Timing is the cheaper way to a tidy record. If the goal is a time you would compare to last month, or a place you would defend, the camera is the difference, and StatLap gives you the camera for free.
Time your next meet with the phones you already have
Timing, the Film Room and the speed gates are free forever. Publishing results to your own page starts at $59 a month.
Related
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