D3Soccer.com

[ThankstoJack]

Jim Hutchinson here, not Christan, but here's the situation, and I will try to not get to deep into the weeds. The key is what hosting platform are the institutions using. There are minor exceptions but Prestosports and Sidearm are the two players in this space. In 2021 it was split 37% of D3 institutions sponsoring soccer were on Presto, 62% on Sidearm. Presto is our platform and we have access to whatever the institution puts in their site. We use schedules, V and LS links if provided, and final results. If at least one of the two competitors is hosted by Presto. If both are Sidearm we track the schedules and results, and then update our database in Presto.

So there is quite a bit of manual effort, and plenty of opportunities for fat finger errors. And unfortunately for us, there has been a long term trend (at least since 2015 that I know about) of institutions moving from Presto to Sidearm. So its getting worse over time.

I have built some (unreasonably complex) Excel workbooks, macros, web scraping routines, and scripts over the years to automate pieces of the tasks. My challenge is they require a lot of handholding to keep working. Reminds me of my first car was a '54 Ford convertible. Thing was a tank ... that's probably why my Dad let me have it. (The $150 purchase price wouldn't buy the spare tire today, but I digress)

[PaulNewman]

Jim Hutchinson here, not Christan, but here's the situation, and I will try to not get to deep into the weeds. The key is what hosting platform are the institutions using. There are minor exceptions but Prestosports and Sidearm are the two players in this space. In 2021 it was split 37% of D3 institutions sponsoring soccer were on Presto, 62% on Sidearm. Presto is our platform and we have access to whatever the institution puts in their site. We use schedules, V and LS links if provided, and final results. If at least one of the two competitors is hosted by Presto. If both are Sidearm we track the schedules and results, and then update our database in Presto.

So there is quite a bit of manual effort, and plenty of opportunities for fat finger errors. And unfortunately for us, there has been a long term trend (at least since 2015 that I know about) of institutions moving from Presto to Sidearm. So its getting worse over time.

I have built some (unreasonably complex) Excel workbooks, macros, web scraping routines, and scripts over the years to automate pieces of the tasks. My challenge is they require a lot of handholding to keep working. Reminds me of my first car was a '54 Ford convertible. Thing was a tank ... that's probably why my Dad let me have it. (The $150 purchase price wouldn't buy the spare tire today, but I digress)

Thanks, Jim.  I keep reading what you nicely dumbed for me and I'm still struggling.  Thank you for all your work behind the scenes.

[ThankstoJack]

Jim Hutchinson here, not Christan, but here's the situation, and I will try to not get to deep into the weeds. The key is what hosting platform are the institutions using. There are minor exceptions but Prestosports and Sidearm are the two players in this space. In 2021 it was split 37% of D3 institutions sponsoring soccer were on Presto, 62% on Sidearm. Presto is our platform and we have access to whatever the institution puts in their site. We use schedules, V and LS links if provided, and final results. If at least one of the two competitors is hosted by Presto. If both are Sidearm we track the schedules and results, and then update our database in Presto.

So there is quite a bit of manual effort, and plenty of opportunities for fat finger errors. And unfortunately for us, there has been a long term trend (at least since 2015 that I know about) of institutions moving from Presto to Sidearm. So its getting worse over time.

I have built some (unreasonably complex) Excel workbooks, macros, web scraping routines, and scripts over the years to automate pieces of the tasks. My challenge is they require a lot of handholding to keep working. Reminds me of my first car was a '54 Ford convertible. Thing was a tank ... that's probably why my Dad let me have it. (The $150 purchase price wouldn't buy the spare tire today, but I digress)

Thanks, Jim.  I keep reading what you nicely dumbed for me and I'm still struggling.  Thank you for all your work behind the scenes.

Let me try this.

Team A and Team B use Prestosports for their athletics web sites.
Team C and Team D use Sidearm

A plays B   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
A plays C or D   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
B plays C or D   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
C plays D   Jim H is the automation 

Specific examples. Kenyon is Sidearm, ONU is Presto. John Carroll is Sidearm
The 9/1 match was automatically on our schedule along with the final score and a recap because ONU uses Presto.
The 9/3 match schedule with John Carroll was entered by me. Even though there will be a V and LS, we don't show on our schedule page. That would require additional manual updating.
Hope this helps.

The C vs D scenario is becoming more common as schools move from Prestosports to Sidearm for the web site service. Particularly as more conferences make the change and bring along most / all of their member institutions.

[PaulNewman]

Jim Hutchinson here, not Christan, but here's the situation, and I will try to not get to deep into the weeds. The key is what hosting platform are the institutions using. There are minor exceptions but Prestosports and Sidearm are the two players in this space. In 2021 it was split 37% of D3 institutions sponsoring soccer were on Presto, 62% on Sidearm. Presto is our platform and we have access to whatever the institution puts in their site. We use schedules, V and LS links if provided, and final results. If at least one of the two competitors is hosted by Presto. If both are Sidearm we track the schedules and results, and then update our database in Presto.

So there is quite a bit of manual effort, and plenty of opportunities for fat finger errors. And unfortunately for us, there has been a long term trend (at least since 2015 that I know about) of institutions moving from Presto to Sidearm. So its getting worse over time.

I have built some (unreasonably complex) Excel workbooks, macros, web scraping routines, and scripts over the years to automate pieces of the tasks. My challenge is they require a lot of handholding to keep working. Reminds me of my first car was a '54 Ford convertible. Thing was a tank ... that's probably why my Dad let me have it. (The $150 purchase price wouldn't buy the spare tire today, but I digress)

Thanks, Jim.  I keep reading what you nicely dumbed for me and I'm still struggling.  Thank you for all your work behind the scenes.

Let me try this.

Team A and Team B use Prestosports for their athletics web sites.
Team C and Team D use Sidearm

A plays B   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
A plays C or D   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
B plays C or D   Information automatically available to D3soccer.com
C plays D   Jim H is the automation 

Specific examples. Kenyon is Sidearm, ONU is Presto. John Carroll is Sidearm
The 9/1 match was automatically on our schedule along with the final score and a recap because ONU uses Presto.
The 9/3 match schedule with John Carroll was entered by me. Even though there will be a V and LS, we don't show on our schedule page. That would require additional manual updating.
Hope this helps.

The C vs D scenario is becoming more common as schools move from Prestosports to Sidearm for the web site service. Particularly as more conferences make the change and bring along most / all of their member institutions.

Jim, thanks, very helpful.  I'm getting there.

So in terms of getting the entire schedule posted prior to the season start, any game with a link to a A or B program will automatically get entered with you having to do nothing beyond having your Presto porgram turned on so to speak.  Is that right?

And then for any C v D matchup how do you locate all those for you to manually input...like a C v D match set for like October 15?  Or let's say Kenyon has 10 games with a connection to a Presto team and 6 without?  What specifically do you have to do to get the 6 games without a Presto link inputed?  You don't actually have to go to the Kenyon website , identify, and hand-read all of the 6 non-Presto linked games?

Regarding updating of rankings to sync with games, who does that updating?  The SIDs, the Presto programs, you/your volunteers?  [And is it literally you or do you typically have a few high school or college volunteers to do data entry?]  Like using the schedule calendar, schedule currently shows for October 8 that #3 W&L is @ #16 CNU.  Those almost certainly won't be their rankings on October 8, so how does that stuff get updated and by whom?

Finally, when I go to November 5 (last regular season game for some conferences and conference tourney games for others), why do I see....Babson TBD, Farmingdale St Skyline Conf Final, Roanoke ODAC Finals, Brevard 2022 USA South Championship?

Sorry, last one for real....so for full Sidearm games, in terms of posting the final score in the system, does that involve literally going to websites of a Sidearm school for the C v D games to find the scores?

[ThankstoJack]

Yes, for A or B programs. No additional work on our part. 

For C v D match ups, yes, I go to each individual school website, find what matches we do not have on our Presto schedule and then create that entry in the Presto database. 

The rankings are the D3soccer.com coaches' poll from the most recent week. What you see currently is the Final poll from 2021. We make those entries into the Presto database after each weekly poll and there is programming that pulls from there to appear in schedules / results.

As an aside, we are not planning to produce a coaches' poll this season. It takes roughly 12 to 15 hours from start to finish to produce both polls (men's and women's), if everything goes perfectly. Rarely, if ever does everything go perfectly. I will likely leave the Final 2021 poll up for a bit longer but then will pull that ranking out. Chris and I are considering how we might identify the stronger teams so their contests will appear at the top of the daily schedule similar to those in the Top 25 do now.

What appears in the November 5 schedule currently is coming from two sources: (1) Anything with a conference tournament reference is coming from an individual school's schedule they set up in Presto. A few schools do make entries in anticipation of making the conference tournament. (2) The other entries are for NWC and UAA regular season matches. These are coming either from schools in those two conferences using Presto or I have created them in Presto for the "C v D" matches.

For full Sidearm games, yes, we go to the websites of one of the two to get the score and then post to our Presto database.

This season, I entered all the "C v D' schedules and will post most of those scores. Chris is going to help when he can, but he has a full-time job and a young family. The last few years Duane Cole helped a great deal with the schedule set up and score updates. He is not going to be able to help this season. We may have used other volunteers prior to my getting involved in 2015 but have not for the last several seasons.

Lastly, all the above are what happens in the vast majority of cases. There are a few exceptions. For example, there are a few SID's on the Sidearm platform who make some of the entries for us in Presto. That has it's own pluses and minuses.

[PaulNewman]

Thanks, Jim.  These are the details I was curious about.  Is it not possible for you to run both systems or too cost prohibitive?

[Christan Shirk]

BIG NEWS!

The D3soccer.com men's and women's rankings are back for another season.  That's the good news.  However, in order to make this a reality we needed to find ways to reduce the effort required, and so we will only be doing Top 15's this year instead of Top 25's.  Just kidding!!!  It's all good news!  We're doing the full traditional 25 teams.  The men's and women's Top 25's are being voted on right now with the rankings released tomorrow morning as we have always done.

A big thank you to jknezek for taking on a portion of the process to help make this feasible for Jim Hutchinson and me.  If new management can be found for the website for the 2023 season and beyond, at least now there will not be a gap year in the rankings.

And . . . something new and exciting. The results of the fan poll being organized by jknezek will be used as a ballot in the official D3soccer.com Top 25.  This season will be a pilot and if it goes well maybe a fan poll can become a permanent part of the site's Top 25 voting.

[camosfan]

Good job guys!

[Hopkins92]

Very cool!!