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HARTINGTON — Since the 2017 track season, Hartington-Newcastle Schools has been the proud owner of a Fully Automatic Timing system (FAT) to assist in timing and recording track meets for meets held at the Hartington Community Athletic Complex and once in a while for other schools in the area.
Since that time, Hartington-Newcastle instructor and technical director, Cody Stappert has been learning, enhancing and runnning the system for meets.
Prior to obtaining the FAT system, hosting a track meet included several officials, a starter, but up to a dozen timers with stopwatches and a couple of “pickers” at the end of each race to determine the races’ winners.
Stappert and the system has replaced the timers and pickers, and he can immediately tell who won the race literally seconds after the event is completed.
“I saw the writing on the wall - especially for hosting district meets,” said Blair Kalin, long-time Hartington-Newcastle athletic director and boys’ track coach. “It took a couple of years but we finally obtained enough money to purchase the system.”
The Wildcats and Lady Wildcats did some fundraising for a good share of the purchase and Hartington-Newcastle Schools filled in the financial gap.
“It was becoming apparent the NSAA was going to require FAT systems to host a district,” said Kalin. “We have a great facility here in Hartington and hosting a district is an advantage for our athletes, Cedar Catholic and ours, and we host a lot of track meets in a season.”
This year, between the HNS and Cedar Catholic, there have been seven invitationals and Cedar Catholic is set to host a district meet early in May.
In addition, Stappert and his trailer have hit the road on occasion and this year was no exception.
They were scheduled to go to Pierce twice for meets, one of the was canceled due to weather, and they did the Mid-State Conference Meet April 29.
Stappert has been the “heart” of the system since it arrived in town, but admits to some growing pains along the way.
“I was the technology guy, so I guess it was natural I would run it,” Stappert said. “We had some bumps along the road, but we once we got a few meets in it became easier.”
“Cody has been great figuring everything out with the system,” Kalin said. “He knows track, he knows the kids and he’s honestly a pretty good guy to be around.”
The feeling is reciprocated by Stappert.
“Once we figured out a system about the system, track meets are fun,” Stappert said. “The best part is the staying involved with the kids, meeting kids from different towns and building relationships with a lot of the coaches - there are a lot of great people in the area.”
“He really knows his stuff,” Cedar Catholic track coach Chad Cattau said. “Track meets run really great here - you never have to worry about any of the technical things, he takes care of all of that.
“I really don’t know how we did it before, but I guess we did.”
The demand for time is still there for Stappert, but he’s replacing a lot of volunteers every meet.
“We needed a lot of volunteers, especially timers and pickers, which is up to 16 people every meet,” Kalin said. “It sure makes running a meet a lot easier.”
Stappert, although not tired of the “job”, saw the need to get some other people up and running behind the main computer.
“There’s a lot to the system, cameras for the finish line, entering all the athletes, assigning numbers - it was time to get some help,” he said. “And I don’t mind watching the kids compete - when you care about what you’re doing you don’t mind doing it, even if the weather’s bad.”
