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Setup guide

Get your meet ready in an afternoon.

The setup is the same shape for every sport — create the meet, pick your sport, build the roster, publish the join code. The sport you choose wires up the right words, timeline, and templates. Here’s the whole flow, then the specifics for each sport.

The core flow

The whole setup, any sport

  1. 1

    Create your host organization

    Go to Host sign-in and enter your email — we send a one-time code, no password to remember. Name your organization (your gym, club, or event company); it’s the home for every meet you run. Add staff later from the Staff page — anyone you invite signs in the same way and shares the same meets.

  2. 2

    Create a meet and pick your sport

    From Meets, hit “+ New meet.” Choosing the sport is the important part: it sets the vocabulary (Meet vs. Tournament, Athlete vs. Wrestler vs. Competitor), the day’s timeline phases, and starter text templates. Add a name, dates, a venue, and a short join code (e.g. RIVER26) families will text or scan.

  3. 3

    Set the timing template

    On the Run sheet, open “Session timing template” and set how long each phase runs, in minutes — check-in, warm-up, competition, awards. New sessions draft their schedule from this, so you set it once. You can re-time it anytime, and everything downstream (flights, reminders, the live program) shifts with it.

  4. 4

    Add your sessions

    Add each session — a level band, an age group, a competition day — with its start time. On the Bell drafts the full timeline for each one from your template. Sessions are the backbone: families subscribe to them, and every event lives inside one.

  5. 5

    Build your roster

    Two ways, mix freely. Import a CSV for the bulk of your field — columns auto-detect, and a preview shows exactly what lands before anything commits. Or, on the Roster tab, hit “+ Add competitor” to enter one by hand: name, gym (existing or brand-new), session, and optional level/division/age. Use the by-hand path for walk-ups and late additions.

  6. 6

    Create your events and place competitors

    This is the step that makes the program come alive. Under Roster → Events, create your events / formats / brackets / classes inside each session, then drop competitors into them. Until an event exists, someone following that session just sees “brackets appear here as they’re posted” — so build your events before or during the day. Recurring class structures (a promotion’s belt/weight matrix, a league’s divisions) can be saved as a Preset and reused on the next meet in one click.

  7. 7

    Publish the join code

    On the Contacts tab, confirm the join code and choose how families find their athlete: by name + gym, by the code printed on their card, or open search. Print it in your program — families text it or scan the QR to opt in. No app, no account. They can follow an individual and/or a whole team.

  8. 8

    Share the live program

    Every meet has a public live program — a link and QR you can print or post. It shows the schedule and brackets with times that stay live as the day runs ahead or behind. Each subscriber also gets a personal link, texted to them at sign-up, showing just the sessions, athletes, and teams they follow.

  9. 9

    Run the day

    On meet day the Run sheet is your control: nudge a session ±5/15/30 minutes and every downstream time re-computes, and the “running ahead” heads-up texts the right families to come over. Use mat control on a bracket to Start it and tap Next — each competitor’s family gets “you’re on deck / you’re up now.” Send broadcasts to a whole meet, one session, or one role.

The order matters. Sessions → roster → events → share. A family can subscribe the moment your join code is live, but their program only fills with brackets once you’ve created the event and placed them in it. So if a subscriber says their page looks empty or shows “brackets appear here as they’re posted,” that’s the step to finish — nothing is wrong with their sign-up.
By sport

Specifics for your event

Gymnastics

Meet · Gym · Athlete · Flight · events are apparatus
  • Sessions are usually a level/age band; add flights within a session and stagger their start times in one click.
  • Timeline phases: check-in → warm-up → march-in → competition → awards.
  • Levels come pre-loaded (USAG DP + Xcel) to help the roster import match; anything unrecognized is kept as-is.

Trampoline & Tumbling

Meet · Gym · Athlete · Flight · events are the apparatus
  • The “event” field is the apparatus — Trampoline, Double-Mini, or Tumbling.
  • Level-session structure: a session is a level/age band; each apparatus flight warms up then competes.
  • Phases: check-in → open stretch → warm-up → competition → awards (no march-in).

Wrestling

Tournament · Team · Wrestler · Bracket · Style/Weight
  • Brackets are by weight class; set each bracket’s mat so “report to Mat 3” texts are actionable.
  • Phases: weigh-in → warm-up → mat assignments → wrestling → awards.
  • Folkstyle weight classes are pre-loaded for roster matching.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Tournament · Academy · Competitor · Bracket
  • A bracket is defined by Format (Gi/No-Gi), Skill level (belt or beginner/intermediate/advanced), Weight, and Age division.
  • Belts are pre-loaded (White→Black); promotions that group belts into classes just type their own — nothing is locked.
  • Save your promotion’s class matrix as a Preset once, then apply it to every future tournament instead of retyping.
  • Running on Smoothcomp? Export your registrations to CSV and import them here.
  • Timeline: check-in → warm-up → bullpen call → matches → awards.

Team formats (soccer, dance, cheer)

follow the team and/or the individual
  • Under Roster → Events → Teams, create your teams (companies, clubs, squads).
  • Tag each appearance — a game, a routine, a number — to its team when you create or edit the event.
  • Families can follow a whole team (every one of its appearances) or an individual athlete, or both, from the same join page.
  • Starting a team’s appearance texts the team’s followers; the live program shows the team’s schedule.
Meet day

Running the relay

The relay is the live “you’re up” pipeline — it texts each competitor’s people the moment their athlete is on deck or up, and shows a live position in the program. It isn’t scoring; it’s the call-up. You run it from one bar per bracket.

  1. 1

    Open Mat control

    Roster → Events → expand a session, then a bracket. Each bracket has a Mat control bar. Leave “text followers” checked to send alerts, or uncheck it to rehearse the whole run silently — no texts sent.

  2. 2

    Start the bracket

    Type the mat or ring number and hit Start bracket. It goes live on the program (“● live · Mat 3”), and its followers get a heads-up like “Round 1 is starting on Mat 3 — please head over.”

  3. 3

    Tap “Next competitor” to advance

    Each tap moves the running order forward and sends two targeted texts: “Ava is up now on Mat 3 — please head over” to Ava’s followers, and “On deck: Ben is up next” to Ben’s. The bar shows who’s up and on deck so you can call it right off the screen.

  4. 4

    Done, or Reset

    Advancing past the last competitor marks the bracket complete. Done ends it early; Reset puts it back to the start to re-run. Neither sends a text.

Each family is pinged for their own athlete only. On-deck and up-now alerts go to the people following that specific competitor — not the whole bracket — so a parent hears exactly when their kid is up. Everyone watching the program also sees the position fill in live: up now, on deck, N up, done.
What subscribers see

Two live views — and how they fill in

Families text your join code or scan the QR, find their athlete (or pick their team), and confirm — no app, no account. From there they get two views, both live all day.

The live program

  • A public link + QR for the whole meet — print it, post it, put it on the wall.
  • Full schedule and brackets, with times that recompute as the day runs ahead or behind.
  • Anyone can open it; no sign-up needed.

Their personal program

  • Texted to each family at sign-up — shows only the sessions, athletes, and teams they follow.
  • Their athlete is starred; a followed team shows its whole schedule.
  • Follow a session before its events exist? They see the session with “brackets appear here as they’re posted” — it fills in the moment you create the event and drop them in.

On meet day

  • Start a bracket and tap Next — families get “on deck,” then “you’re up now.”
  • Nudge a session and everyone subscribed to it gets the new time, automatically.
  • Reply STOP unsubscribes instantly; consent is recorded on every sign-up.

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