Timely Information for Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
Summer Update #2
Here’s what we’re up to this summer.
We’re busy! Here’s what we’re doing.
Improving Scoring Interface
Engineering is improving the scoring interface by making the scoring buttons easier to access, surfacing “choice-on-restart” to the score sheet, filling in notational voids in the rules books, preventing a handful of infrequent scoring errors and adding support for non-participant penalties. We’re working closely with a bunch of experienced Takedown users to validate the changes and chase bugs. The group is giving us some great insights and they are expert bug finders.
This work will make the scoring interface even more reliable and easy to use while, at the same time, generating statistical details that aren’t currently available. In addition, architectural changes will make it easier for us to implement a high quality scoring interface for international styles in the future.
The major release with these changes will be available in early September.
High School Rules Changes
On April 23, 2024, the NFHS annouced a slate of wrestling rules changes for the 2024-2025 season. The relevant changes concern point awards for takedowns and near falls. These changes will be in the early September release.
Mat Side Scoreboard — Should we offer?
We’ve dabbled in scoreboards from the beginning. Takedown currently offers a a Scoreboard feature for presenting a professional, real-time, wrestling-specific scoreboard on a digital display.
So far, we haven’t offered for sale a hardware scoreboard though we’ve designed, built and used plenty of them.
We were pleasantly surprised to discover we could deliver a tripod stand-mounted, wireless, dual display scoreboard — pictured above — for about $600.
With enough concrete interest, we’ll likely make this dual display scoreboard available for purchase. Until then, it’ll sit in the lab (all lonely and stuff).
Express your interest to support@levelchanger.com .
Generate Revenue for your Program
We’re adding Advertising to the Scoreboard feature. This capability offers an exciting way to generate revenue for your program by allowing you to display a rotating schedule of advertising or sponsorship images on the Scoreboard. This is an easy way to raise significant funds for your program. Many local advertisers will renew their ads every season, so this new feature offers the potential for a low cost, recurring source of incremental funding.
Impact of NCAA Rule Changes on Scoring
Lastly, we’ve analyzed customer data to assess the impact of last year’s NCAA rules changes on scoring. We’re the first to do this work and it’s garnered some attention in the wrestling world. Read our analysis here.
We’ve had some questions from around the wrestling-verse so this work is ongoing.
Teams and States Leading the Digital Revolution -- Final Tally 2023-2024
Usual suspects lead the way in 2023-2024
Top 20 Digitized Wrestling Teams
Edwardsville High School Wrestling
Hillsborough Wrestling Takedown Club
Evanston Township
Chief Sealth
Jays Wrestling
JC Youth Wrestling Club
North Knox
Big Walnut
Wauseon
Butler (Vandalia)
Liberty High School
Shawnee Mission South HS
Napoleon
Mallard Creek High School
Yorkville
Lockport Township
Hurricane Middle School
Langham Creek HS
Western Boone Wrestling
Hurricane High School
Top 10 Digitized Wrestling States
Ohio
Illinois
Missouri
Pennsylvania
California
Michigan
Texas
Kansas
Indiana
Georgia
One Million
Doing anything a million times is noteworthy.
Takedown users have scored over one million matches! Wow. That’s quite an accomplishment!
Congratulations to all of our wonderful customers including these two happy managers.
Onward to two million.
More:
High School Wrestling Participation
It was a very good year.
A company friend suggested we revise our annual look at high school wrestling participation to include the 2022/23 data.
Good idea! We did that.
Wrestling overall is doing better and the girls are a big contributor. Total participation is at an all time high and average boys team size reversed a disturbing downward trend.
Take a look at the data and draw your own conclusions about the health of high school wrestling.
Takedown v. Matboss
You don’t need another boss. You need help.
We are often asked “How does Takedown compare to Matboss?”
Here’s a comparison.
Congrats!
Our customers are amazing.
Recently, our our users collectively achieved an impressive milestone having scored more the 400,000 matches — 28,571 high school dual meet equivalents — using Takedown Scoring and Stats. Holy smokes, that’s a lot of digital scoring!
Congratulations on leading our sport into the digital age.
Here are some other stats about user activity.
“70,000+”
“55,000+”
“100,000+”
“40,000+”
Top Ten Digital Wrestling Teams
Smiths Station
Ansley-Litchfield
Midview
Columbia
Shelbyville
New Richmond
Tullahoma
Western Boone
Bryan
Seneca Valley
Top Ten Digital Wrestling States
Ohio
Indiana
Pennsylvania
Kansas
California
Tennessee
Georgia
Nebraska
South Carolina
Montana
By any measure, impressive work. Nice job, digital wrestling ninjas!
LevelChanger Presents at California Coaches Clinic
Fresno State wrestling head coach Troy Steiner invited us to the California Coaches Clinic. Here’s what we talked about.
Invited to present at the California Wrestling Coaches Clinic in Fresno this past weekend. Here’s what we talked about.
Monterey Clinic of Champions 2012
Takedown at the Monterey Clinic of Champions for Coaches
Early on Saturday morning, we loaded our gear into the back of the truck and drove down to the 2012 Monterey Clinic of Champions for Coaches, the 35th annual meeting of this fabulous clinic that is held on the California coast.
Usually we attend as coaches with our notepads and recording devices. This time we came as presenters manning a booth to show the Takedown app to fellow high-school coaches and to gather their feedback. We felt very lucky for all the comments and advice we received and it was great to put faces to names. There were at least 180 coaches in attendance at the Clinic, and we were pleased to have 50 of them stop by our booth.
The coaches told us that what they liked was the simplicity, security, and reporting capabilities of the iPad-based app. What we also heard was that we shouldn't lose that focus and that coaches need something that is as easy to use ten hours into a tournament as it is during the first match of the day. We really understand that !
We also showed how Takedown on the iPad can drive an ordinary external display using an inexpensive connector or using the Apple TV device. We had set up both of these on the table.
Coaches were particularly interested how Takedown reports can be used to help their kids get recruited by colleges. We'll write more in future blog entries about the use of external displays and using Takedown to help in recruiting.
Takedown by LevelChanger. Available on the App Store