Knowledge Base — Coaches

Article 1

Getting started: create your account and get your team

Applies to: new coaches and team staff
Where: /register, then /coach

Step 1 — Create your account

Go to meetdirector.online and click Create your team account (or Sign in → Create an account).
Enter your first name, last name, email address and a password. A phone number is optional — it is only used to help verify it's you if you ever need to recover your account.
Submit, then check your email and click the verification link.
Sign in with your email and password.

You now have an account, but you are not yet attached to a team. Until you are, the Coach portal shows a "Claim your club" panel instead of rosters and uploads.

Step 2 — Get a team

Open the Coach portal at /coach. You have three ways forward:

Situation	What to do
Your club is already on MeetDirector	In the Request a team card at the bottom, pick your team from the dropdown (listed as Team Name (CODE)) and click Request access.
Your club is not on MeetDirector yet	Click Create a team and register the club. Whoever creates it becomes its team admin.
You only want to enter your own swimmers, not a club	Click Enter my own swimmers as unattached.

Step 3 — Wait for approval

A request to join an existing club is reviewed by that club's team admin (or by a MeetDirector administrator). While it is pending it appears under My requests as Pending. When it is approved, the club appears under My teams with its athlete and meet counts, and the full portal tiles unlock.

Don't see your team in the dropdown? It may not be set up yet, or it may be spelled/coded differently than you expect. Create it, or open a support ticket and we'll help you find it — make sure the team code matches the one used in your team-management software (Hy-Tek Team Manager, SwimTopia, etc.).

What you get once you're in

The Coach portal tiles are your launcher:

Create a team · Enter a meet · Upload entries
Host a meet · My hosted meets
Upload results (if you have permission to import)
Results uploaded — meets where someone else's file brought your swims
Payouts — Stripe payouts for your clubs

Note on early access: hosting meets and collecting entries is being rolled out club by club. If you see the "Meet hosting is in early access" notice, you can look around but not yet create a meet — open a support ticket to ask us to switch your club on.

Article 2

Viewing and managing your roster

Applies to: approved coaches
Where: /coach → click your team, or /coach/team/{TEAM-CODE}

Viewing your roster

The roster table lists every athlete on your team with Name, Gender, Age, USA-S # and Status (Active or Inactive). Inactive swimmers are shown dimmed. From each row you can:

click the swimmer's name to open their public profile (best times and results),
click edit to change their details,
click goals to see their goals and progression.

Use Download roster at the top of the page to export the roster.

Adding a swimmer

In the Add athlete card, fill in:

Field	Required?	Notes
First name	Yes
Last name	Yes
Gender	Yes	Female or Male
Date of birth	Recommended	Used to calculate age and age groups
USA-S #	Optional	Strongly recommended where you have it

Click Add athlete — the swimmer appears in the roster immediately.

Tip: date of birth and USA-S # are how the system matches a swimmer to results when a meet file is uploaded. Good identifiers are the single best way to prevent duplicate records.

Removing a swimmer

There is no delete — that protects every swimmer's results and history. Click Deactivate on their row instead. They drop off the active roster but keep all past results, and Activate brings them back.

Your club's public page

Every club has a page at /teams/{id}, linked from Teams. Anyone can see the club's name, governing body, league, classification, how many swimmers and meets it has, and its coaching staff. The roster is not public — see below.

If you're the team admin, the roster page has a Club details card that fills that page in:

Field	Notes
Street address, city, state, ZIP	Shown as your club's address
Phone	With a Keep this number private box — tick it and the number is stored but never shown
Website	Linked from your club page
Team logo	PNG, JPG, GIF or WEBP, up to 2 MB; appears beside your club's name

Everything is optional, and nothing is published until you enter it.

Who can see your roster

Who	What they see
Anyone, signed in or not	Club details, coaching staff, and the number of swimmers
A swimmer or parent linked to your club	Names, gender and age — no USA-S numbers, no links to anyone's times
Your coaches and site administrators	The full roster, with identifiers and links through to each swimmer

Being signed in isn't enough to see another club's roster — it's a list of children, and the check is whether you coach the club or have a swimmer on it.

Coach email addresses

Each coach's email is hidden on the public page until someone chooses to publish it. In Coaches & staff, the line under each address toggles it:

A coach can always publish or hide their own address.
The team admin can set it for anyone on the club's listing.
Nobody else can — a coach at another club can't publish yours.

It's set per club, so a coach who works with two clubs can appear on one page and not the other.

Fixing duplicate swimmers

If the same swimmer exists twice (different spelling, club record vs. school record), use Merge duplicates at the top of the roster page. Choose the record to keep and the duplicate to retire; the duplicate's results move to the record you keep. Merges are reviewed carefully — if two records carry different USA-S numbers the system treats them as different people and will not merge them. Open a support ticket if you're stuck on a merge you believe is correct.

Article 3

Uploading meet results

Applies to: coaches, meet directors and timing vendors
Where: /import (Coach portal → Upload results)

What you can upload

Hy-Tek and SDIF results files: .hy3, .sd3, .cl2, .ev3, .hyv, or a .zip containing them — you can upload the export archive exactly as Meet Manager produced it. Teams, athletes, events, results and splits are all imported.

Who can upload a meet's results

Only the meet's host uploads its results. That means the host club's coach or meet director, the host's timing company, or an administrator of the host's organization or conference. A results file covers every club that was at the meet, so the file you were handed as a visiting coach is not yours to upload — the import refuses it with a message naming who can. Ask the host (or their timing company) to upload it; your swimmers' times arrive the moment they do, and you'll find the meet under Results uploaded.

If your club hosted the meet, you're the host — upload away.

How to upload

Open Upload results from the Coach portal, or go to /import.
Choose your results file.
Choose the Meet LSC if this is an LSC/USA-Swimming meet. Leave it as none for high school or rec-league meets. (If your LSC isn't listed, expand LSC not listed? Create it.)
Click Upload & import.

If the system asks a question first

Before writing anything, the import may stop and ask you to confirm:

"Which meet is this?" — nothing matched closely enough to be certain, but a meet with the same name already exists on that day. Pick it so all results stay together, or let the import create a new meet. (Unrelated meets that merely share the date are no longer listed.)
"Which of your clubs hosted this meet?" — only asked when you coach more than one club in the file. If you coach exactly one, it's the host and the question is skipped. A meet that already has a host on record is never asked about again.

The host you confirm is what the meet's reports, the meet finder's host search and online payments read, and a later upload can't overturn it.

Answer the question and submit; the import then runs and shows a summary of what was created and changed.

Important things to know

One results file covers the whole meet. Importing it writes swims for every club present. That's intentional — your swimmers' away-meet times live in the host's file, which is why the host is the one who uploads it.
Every other club is notified. Each affected club gets a notice naming you as the uploader, so nothing is written silently — and their coaches are emailed that the results are posted, with a link to download their own club's files (see The "Results posted" email in article 4).
Re-uploading is safe. Importing a corrected file updates the existing results rather than duplicating the meet; the summary tells you how many existing results changed.

If something goes wrong

Check the import summary and the Data review page for the meet (/meets/{id}/review), which lists unmatched swimmers and data to fix, grouped by team. Most import problems are identifier problems — a swimmer missing a birth date or USA-S #. Fix them on the roster and re-import.

If the file is rejected outright, open a support ticket and attach the file.

"We hosted this" — claiming a meet with no host on record

Meets imported before the host question existed, or whose uploader left it blank, have no host club. Such a meet is missing from the host's reports, from the meet finder's host search and from payments. Open My meets (/coach/meets): the Host column shows each meet's host, and a meet with none offers a We hosted this button for the club you swam it as.

Clicking it files a request, not a change — the badge reads claim pending until an administrator approves it, and you get an email when they do. Only a coach of a club that actually appears in the meet can claim it, and one claim per meet is open at a time.

Until a host is on record, nobody can upload a results file into that meet — the import refuses with "…is already on the site without a host on record. Claim it from your coach portal first". Claim, wait for approval, then upload.

Article 4

Viewing results and times

Applies to: everyone; some views are coach-only
Where: /meets, /coach/uploads, athlete profiles

Finding a meet

Find a meet on the front page — and the same search at the top of /meets — takes one box for the meet name, host club (name or code), pool, or town, state or ZIP, plus a Course filter and Upcoming / Past / All.

Useful for a coach: search your own club's code to pull up every meet you've hosted or swum, or a rival's code before a dual meet. A meet stays upcoming until the day it finishes. Town and ZIP only match meets whose host entered a location, so older imported meets are best found by name or club code.

Meet results

Meets (/meets) lists meets on the site. Open a meet for its detail page, then:

Results — every event, round by round, with places, times and splits.
Heat sheet — heats and lane assignments.
Standings — team scores.

Results are listed in order: swims that count (by place/time) first, then DQ, then SCR, with NS last.

Results other people uploaded for your clubs

Coach portal → Results uploaded (/coach/uploads) lists every meet where someone else's file brought swims for your clubs. It shows the meet, the club, how many swims arrived, how many existing results were changed, who uploaded it and when.

These results are already live — this page exists so you know they arrived.
Click Got it to acknowledge a notice and clear it from the list.
Click Something's wrong to describe the problem and Flag for an administrator. Flagging asks an administrator to look; it does not remove anything.
Use Show everything to include notices you've already seen.

Downloading your club's results

Coach portal → My meets (/coach/meets) lists every meet your clubs have swum or hosted. Each row with results has a Download results button; it gives you a zip with your club's swims from that meet as .hy3 and .cl2 files, ready to import into your team management software. Only your own club's swims are in the file — the rest of the meet is viewable online under Meets, but not downloadable from here.

You have to be signed in with an account that is a coach of that club; if you follow a download link while signed out you land on the sign-in page and are sent on to the download afterwards.

The "Results posted" email

When another club's coach, a meet director or a timing company uploads a meet your club swam in, every coach of your club gets an email with the subject Results posted: {meet} — {CODE}. It shows the meet, its dates and host, how many of your swims arrived, a Download your team's results button, and the steps above in case the button doesn't work for you. If a corrected file is uploaded later and your club's swims change, you get an Updated results posted email.

The email goes to people with coach access to the club — it's the same access the download needs. A club with no coach accounts on MeetDirector gets no email; its uploaded-results notice still appears on /coach/uploads once a coach joins.
The uploader's own club is not emailed — they already know.
Emails go out within the hour of the upload finishing, not instantly.
Each message carries an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing stops these and other announcements; you still receive anything to do with your own account, entries and meets.
The site administrator can turn this email off for the whole site, so if it stops arriving, check /coach/uploads first — the results are there regardless.

Individual swimmer times

Click a swimmer's name anywhere (roster, results, rankings) to open their profile, which shows best times by event and course, full event times with progression, split comparison, and a complete results list. From your roster, the goals link opens that swimmer's goals and progression view.

Rankings

/rankings shows live rankings across the site, including the Advanced tab (course conversion, combined age groups, splits). /sotw shows Swimmer of the Week.

Article 5

Approving coaches and adding meet directors

Applies to: the team admin of a club
Where: /coach/team/{TEAM-CODE} → Coaches & staff

Only the team admin sees this section. Whoever created the club is its first team admin; the role can be handed on.

Approving a coach who asked to join

Open your team's roster page.
Scroll to Coaches & staff → Requests to join.
Each request shows the person's name and the date they asked. Click Approve to give them coach access, or Turn down to decline.

Approved coaches get full roster access for that club.

Managing current coaches

The Current coaches table lists everyone on staff, with their email and a Team admin badge where it applies. For any coach who isn't the team admin you can:

Make team admin — hands the team-admin role to them. You stop being the admin, so you'll be asked to confirm.
Remove — takes their access to this club away.

Adding a meet director

A meet director can set up and run your club's meets — create meets, open and close entries, manage payments — but does not get roster access.

Ask the person to create a MeetDirector account first (/register) and tell you the email they used.
In Coaches & staff → Meet directors, enter that email under Add a meet director and click Add meet director.
They appear in the meet directors list, and the meet-hosting tools unlock for them next time they sign in.

To take the role away, click Remove on their row.

The email must match an existing MeetDirector account exactly. If the grant is rejected, check that they registered and verified their email address first.

Timing vendors

If a timing company runs your meets, you can either Invite a timing vendor from the Coach portal (enter their vendor code), or approve a timing-vendor request when it appears at the top of the Coach portal. An approved vendor's staff can set up and manage meets your club hosts.

Article 6

Getting help — submitting a support ticket

If something isn't working, or you need a club, LSC or early-access feature switched on, open a support ticket:

➡ support.meetdirector.online

How to submit a ticket

Go to support.meetdirector.online.
Sign in (or create a support account) using the same email address as your MeetDirector account — it lets us find your teams and uploads straight away.
Click Submit a ticket, choose the topic that fits best, and describe the problem.
Submit. You'll get a confirmation email, and replies arrive by email — reply to the email to add to the same ticket.

What to include (this gets you answered fastest)

Your account email and your team name and code (e.g. Riverside Riptide (RSR)).
The page URL where the problem happened (e.g. /coach/team/RSR).
What you expected to happen and what actually happened.
The exact error message, or a screenshot of it.
For import problems: attach the results file and name the meet and date.
For roster or duplicate-swimmer problems: the swimmer's name and date of birth.

Common requests to raise as tickets

Enable meet hosting / entries for my club (early access).
My team isn't in the Request a team list.
Approve a swimmer merge the system blocked.
Results were uploaded for my club that look wrong (you can also flag these in-app from Results uploaded → Something's wrong).
Change a club's name, code or affiliation.

Please don't email swimmer dates of birth, USA-S numbers or other personal details in a screenshot of a public page. Send just the swimmer's name and the meet, and we'll look up the rest.