Game Day Checklist

Follow this Takedown checklist on game day. Be ready to go.

Avoid the Season Start Blues

Here are the things that can be frustrating at season start and how to fix them before the referee blows the whistle.

Crash on Launch

For a variety of technical reasons, if the app hasn’t been launched for a few months it will often crash or simply close very quickly after launch. Delete the app, download from the App Store and log in.

YouTube Upload Limit

YouTube temporarily imposes upload limits on new YouTube accounts. You can fix this and it is a very good idea to do this prior to the season. See this support article.

Bad Email Address

Your Takedown login email isn’t accessible and you need it changed. See this support article.

Can’t Find Email Verification Message

Common problem especially if you use a school email address. See this support article.

Subscription Problems

Can be very frustrating for you and us, too. Common causes: (1) invalid payment method on your Apple ID so your purchase didn’t complete; (2) purchased the subscription(s) with an Apple ID that isn’t used on any of your Takedown iPads; and (3) you forgot that you cancelled auto-renewal.

We can’t fix these problems, but we can offer some help:

1. Make sure at least one of your Takedown iPads is registered to the Apple ID that purchased the subscription.

2. Use “Check for Active Subscriptions” to force Takedown to get your subscription status (Takedown>Settings>Takedown Store)

3. Use “Manage Subscriptions” to see if Apple thinks the Apple ID on the iPad has a valid Takedown subscription. (Takedown>Settings>Takedown Store). Again, only one of your Takedown iPads needs to be registered to the Apple ID that purchased the subscription.

These articles from our support site have more details.

Rosters

The process we use to gather rosters from Trackwrestling is very labor intensive and manual. Our database isn’t dynamically synchronized with Track. It can be a day or two out of date.

If you notice a Track roster that’s not in our online database, let us know here. We can fix this same day during the week (but not same minute).

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Don’t wait for your hair to catch fire before fixing these typical season startup problems. Reach out to us if we can help.

Table Top Stand is Way Too Easy

For a dual meet, it doesn’t get any easier. See our Helpful Accessories page.

3 Tasks for Success

Using Takedown for the first time in live competition can be overwhelming. Here are three things you can do to get your scorers prepared for using Takedown in the live competition context.

1. Transcribe from Paper Scorebook

Copying matches from a paper scorebook is the first step. This context doesn’t have the pressure of a live situation so that the scorer can take their time and get familiar with the scoring interface. It also affords an opportunity to schedule and configure Events. The task should include a full dual meet and some tournament matches. The user shouldn’t be concerned with the match clock — just start it and enter the scoring, then move on to the next match. The goal here is to replicate the paper scorebook.

If you don’t have a paper scorebook handy, try this training exercise from our support site.

2. Score from Recorded Video

Any video recording of a wrestling match will do. It could be of your team or just some matches on YouTube. This is the next step-up in difficulty as the action is live but can be paused if necessary. Don’t worry about getting the names of the competitors correct. The goal of this task is to simulate the pace of live competition. Keeping the match clock accurate is an important skill development area.

3. Score Challenge Matches in the Practice Room

The last step, this is live competition without the pressure of a large audience and, perhaps, an impatient official. It’s a safe environment. In this task, all the skills developed in steps 1 and 2 will be tested at a live pace. In addition, the user should practice using the video recording feature.

In our experience, if your scorer follows these three steps, they’ll be successful when scoring and video recording live competition. When the training is done, you can simply delete the matches or events so that they don’t corrupt your analytics. You could also create a “Training” Season for all this activity and that would keep all the data separate from your competition seasons.

One Last Item

Add your managers/scorers to the Contacts portion of Takedown located at the top level in My Team. Doing this will add them to our mailing list so that they will be informed. When a manager/scorer moves on, they can easily unsubscribe from our mailing list.

What Does the Data Say About Short-Time Scoring?

To gauge the relevance of short-time scoring as a predictor of victory, we gathered data from 7,355 matches wrestled by 181 athletes at 13 high schools, all users of Takedown Scoring and Stats.

We filtered the data as follows:

• Included varsity competition only

• Included wrestlers with greater than 20 periods of short-time scoring data

• Excluded exhibitions and forfeits from win-loss record

From this sample, we found the following:

1. With a negative Short-Time Scoring Average Point Advantage the probability of having a winning season is 41%.

2. With a zero or positive Average Point Advantage the probability of having a winning season is 82%.

This chart shows win percentage as a function of Average Point Advantage for this sample (each dot is a wrestler):

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Stats: Short Time Scoring vs. Winning Percentage

And, while the relevance of short-time scoring is hard to deny, we wondered if improved short-time scoring performance — a positive and increasing Average Point Advantage — is simply a matter of experience. That is, does advantage increase as a function of cumulative match experience?

Surprisingly, in this sample, the answer is no. There’s no meaningful correlation between experience (measured in matches) and short-time scoring performance.

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Short-Time Scoring v. Matches Wrestled

So, we know (at least in this sample) that short-time scoring proficiency can increase one’s chances of having a winning season. It also appears that short-time scoring performance doesn’t naturally improve with experience. Maybe scoring in short-time is a skill (or perhaps a mindset) requiring focus and practice.

Something to think about for coaches wanting to help wrestlers get to the next level.

If you’re interested in tracking short-time scoring performance, check out Takedown Scoring and Stats.