Current Database Progress:

Total Results: 24778

Years: 1977-78 - 2009-10

Athletes: 1008

01/21/2009

 We made some good progress over the last weeks of Christmas break and these early weeks of the spring semester on the EIU Track & Field Database.  We are now back to 1987, have over 16,000 Results, nearly 600 Athletes, and nearly 700 Meets.

Aside from just results, all the videos from the past 3 years are now online, as well as FAT pictures, and full results (pdf's).  The Photocenter has continually grown with the addition of pictures spanning back to 1988 at this point, and that will continue to grow as we reach further back in time.  Team Media Guides, and other team documents are also being scanned in.  We are in the process of acquiring old videos from 1986 - present, and hope to load those on the website as well.  We have a limited selection of video currently, but its still fun stuff to watch.  Also, for each meet in the past 10 years, we hope to be able to scan and post the full results packets.

Other improvements that have been made include the ability for alumni to enter any post-collegiate race results they have, and those results will be shown on their roster page.  And Alumni can also enter a 'status update' on themselves, and let other alumni know what they are up to, and such.  These options are all available on the alumni page.  We hope to continue to grow the alumni section of the site.

Improvements we are currently working on include site search ability.  Currently there is no good way to search for an athlete or meet, etc...  We hope to implement and site search within the next month that will allow anyone to search for an athlete, or athletes that went to certain high schools, search for a meet, or meet location, and so on.

If you have ideas for other improvements we could make on the site, please contact us.

And as always, if you find errors on the site, PLEASE let us know.  No matter how small the error is, even if on your roster page, your high school is spelled wrong, please tell us.  We are trying to create an accurate and consistent database.

steepleweb Atkinson
Project Leader

Almost all the actual work has been accomplished by the following:

Nic Atkinson, Brad Butler, and Kyle Swynenburg

10/12/2008

In the Spring of 2008, I decided to create a web-based Track & Field team management application.  After 8 months and over 300 hours of coding, SteepleWeb was born.  More than just a Content Management System (CMS) for easy website creation and upkeep, SteepleWeb also includes the Track & Field database segment.  This database segment allows for a track team to take all their results and put them in an organized fashion for data reporting.  Tie this is with the CMS of SteepleWeb, and you have a website that allows for your Track & Field data to be output to an easy to use website.

We’ve started a long process of populating the database with ALL the results currently available for the history of EIU Track & Field and Cross Country.  You may have already noticed, as of today (10/12/2008) we have over 3,000 results in the database, spanning over 5 years of meets. We are hoping to have all athletes, schedules, and results from 1970 to present on the website within the next year. We will also try and add pictures, media guides, and ony other materials we come across. That means if you are an alumni, you will have your own roster pages with the summary of your career here at EIU.

This is an exciting project, and I believe many of you faithful followers of EIU Track & Field and Cross Country will be excited when you start to see the amount of history that will be available on eiurunning.com.

Currently we only have 1 person entering data, with the occasional help of others, so the process is quite arduous.  Not to mention, I am still working out the bugs and adding features to SteepleWeb.

We can use your help by looking at the data that is entered so far, and if you see errors, please use the ‘Find an Error?’ link at the bottom of every page on eiurunning.com to report the error to us so we can fix it.

Continue to check the site in the coming months to see the history of EIU Track & Field and Cross Country revitalized on the internet.  Please email me with comments, questions, or ideas.

Nathan Atkinson
eiurunning.com Webmaster
Senior Middle Distance Runner