USAW Guide for owlcms

Overview

This document will guide you through setting up and running a USAW-sanctioned weightlifting meet, providing helpful tools and documents for running your meet. Each step will link out to the owlcms documentation, but this is not a comprehensive guide. We recommend at least browsing through the full documentation to become familiar with the available features and functionality.

Quick Start Kit

The Nemikor USAW Quick Start kit is a version of owlcms already customized with all of the settings, templates, and age groups configured for compliance with USAW's rules and regulations. This is the same kit that is used for all national meets.

1. Download the file.
2. Open the owlcms Control Panel.
3. From the "File" menu, click "Install from Local ZIP".
4. Select the Quick Start kit zip file (linked below).
5. Click the blue "Launch" button to start owlcms.

Age Groups and Categories

Before you load the athletes into owlcms, you must define which age groups and categories are being contested. Before and during the competition, you only want to activate the age groups and weight classes that are eligible for medals.

All age groups and weight classes defined by USAW are already loaded, but only some of the age groups will be active. Make sure you activate or deactivate each age group based on your competition.

1. Navigate to "Prepare Competition" -> "Define Age Groups and Categories".
2. Adjust the active age groups as necessary for your competition.

Registration

Athletes and sessions are entered through a registration spreadsheet. If your registration was done through BARS, you can use our registration conversion tool to convert it to an owlcms registration file.

Records

owlcms provides records management, allowing multiple sets of records to be tracked and displayed. All local competitions are eligible to set new WSO records, so we are actively working to provide record files for each WSO.

Medals

As soon as each session finishes, you can check which medals are ready to be awarded. The medals report will contain the medals for all categories that have just finished. You can set whether medals are earned for each lift or only the total on the Competition Rules settings page.

1. Navigate to "Results" -> "Session Results".
2. Select the session that just finished.
3. Click the "Medals" button.
4. Select the "Medals.xlsx" option.

Prior to the competition, you can produce a medal schedule to determine when medals for each category can be awarded. This will look at which categories are competing in each session and determine the last session for each category. Since some athletes may not show up or change weight class at weigh-in, it is possible that the medal schedule can change during competition. For this reason, it is useful to compare the session's medal results to the pre-competition medal schedule to identify any categories that might have been missed in the medal reports. If this happens, just go back to the last session that contained the missed category and print the medal results again.

1. Navigate to "Results".
2. Click the "Medal Schedule" button.
3. Select the "BySession.xlsx" or "ByCategory.xlsx" option as needed.

The BySession.xlsx template will provide a list of categories that will be awarded after each session. This is useful for staff to ensure all categories are awarded at the correct time.

The ByCategory.xlsx template will provide a list of each category and the session when the awards will be presented. This is useful for athletes, coaches, and spectators to see when a specific athlete's award ceremony will occur.

Best Lifter

If you're awarding best lifter, the final package will contain overall rankings based on various scoring systems. If you're awarding best lifter in various age groups, you can filter the results by championship, age group, and category before producing the final package.

1. Navgiate to "Results" -> "Competition Results".
2. Optionally filter the athletes using the dropdowns.
3. Click the "Final Results Package" button.
4. Select the "Best-Lifter.xlsx" option.

BARS Results

At the end of the competition, owlcms can produce a BARS-compatible results spreadsheet. Results for BARS should contain the most specific category each athlete is eligible for, even if that category was not contested, so you must reassign the categories for the athletes.

1. Navigate to "Prepare Compeition" -> "Define Age Groups and Categories".
2. Select "BARS-Results.xlsx" from the dropdown.
3. Click the "Load Predefined Definition" button.
4. Click the "Confirm" button in the dialog that pops up.
5. Navigate to "Results" -> "Competition Results".
6. Click the "Registration Category Results" button.
7. Select the "USAW-BARS-Results.xlsx" option.
8. Click the "Download" button.
9. Open the downloaded file and follow the instructions in the yellow box.

Referee Devices

Take the next step in improving the quality of your weightlifting meets with Blue Owl devices for referees, a timekeeper, and a down signal. These are the same devices used at USAW national meets.