Features
Everything on the deck, and everything after it.
Ten pieces, one shape: the same at-a-glance sheet a coach already reads, followed all the way from the deck to the dashboard weeks later.
On the deck
Three panels, lane 1 to the top.
The coach view splits into three stacked panels — what's coming, what's racing right now, and what just happened. Lane numbers show as the bare number. No “L.”
On deck
The next heat, lane 1 to the highest lane, in an auto-sliding strip. Toggle between the whole heat and just your swimmers. Tap a card for that swimmer.
In the water
Collapsed until you hit Start. Starting expands it and arms tap-to-place — heat nav on either side, a red End button, and it auto-advances once every lane has a time.
Previous
The heat that just finished. Shows heat place — full-event places wait until the whole event is done. Nothing about a finished heat is locked; it's still clickable.
The meet sheet
Event → heat → lane, kept in sync with the deck.
Toggle one event at a time or the whole meet. Live mode highlights the running heat so the sheet and the deck never disagree.
- •Search across swimmers, events, and teams.
- •Relays show the team plus up to four swimmers — each one individually clickable.
- •Champs meets are 9 lanes; dual-meet lane count is selectable.
Timing
Tap-to-place now. Timing systems later.
Whenever a result carries a real time, Deck Buddy shows improvement against the seed automatically — however that time got onto the board.
Not connected Working now
Hit Start, then tap swimmers' names as they finish. Each tap assigns the next heat place. Heat place only, no times. No keyboard, no stopwatch, no typing — a coach can do it while watching the water.
Connected Planned
Reading a timing system isn't built yet. Once it is, the timing system becomes the source of truth: places and times come from it, touchpad splits arrive on their own, and the coach's job is tagging and notes.
Try it — press a chip
* Turns only shows up for swimmers 11 and older.
Tagging
Eleven chips. No tree to dig through.
A flat set of broad "needs work" chips, tapped from the swimmer popover. On deck there's no time to navigate a tree — specificity goes in the notes field.
- •IM events prefix the tag with the leg you pick — "Back — Turns."
- •Relay swimmers add a spot chip: Lead-off / Support / Anchor.
Splits
One tap today. Automatic with touchpads later.
A splits button opens a popup over the meet sheet — one button per home swimmer in the heat. You tap as they hit the wall. Buttons only, no typing. Once timing-system support lands, touchpad splits arrive on their own.
| Place | Dual | Champs |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 6 | 11 |
| 2nd | 4 | 9 |
| 3rd | 3 | 8 |
| 4th | 2 | 7 |
| 5th | 1 | 6 |
| 6th | — | 5 |
| 7th | — | 4 |
| 8th | — | 3 |
| 9th | — | 2 |
| 10th | — | 1 |
Dual relays: A-team only, double points. Champs relays: double points, always 9 lanes. Time trials are a third meet type — no points, no places, and they're excluded from improvement.
Scoring
Dual, champs, time trials — the math is built in.
Point values differ by meet type. Deck Buddy already knows which one you're running.
Improvement % = improved swims ÷ total swims.
Statuses
Scratch, no-show, DQ — tracked, not guessed.
All three cross the swimmer out and drop them from placing, scoring, and results.
Scratch
A planned withdrawal, set per-event or whole-meet from the Participants & scratches screen, for any team.
No-show
Entered but didn't show. Toggled from the swimmer popover, same effect as a scratch.
Disqualification
Carries the exact USA Swimming code, for every team. Warns when you DQ a 6-and-under swimmer, and on a relay it's attributed to the specific swimmer.
Imports
Load the program once. Never retype a roster.
Hy-Tek Meet Manager program PDFs load straight in — multi-column pages get de-columned first.
- •Hy-Tek results PDFs merge onto a loaded program by event number and name, or load as a standalone flat meet.
- •Time Drops heat sheets come in by pasted text — it's a passcode-gated live SPA with no public feed.
Tuned on one real program
Export
A spreadsheet shaped like the sheet you already use.
A Google Sheet with the roster down the side and stroke categories across the top. Every cell holds place, time, the best-time flag, and comments.
Sample data| Swimmer | Medley Relay | Fly | Back | IM | Breast | Free | Free Relay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maya R. | — | 1st · 32.14 ·B | — | 3rd · 2:41.02 | — | — | 2nd · 1:52.30 |
| Jonah P. | — | 1st · 29.88 ·BR | — | — | — | 4th · 26.90 | — |
| Priya S. | — | — | 2nd · 33.02 | — | 4th · 38.71 | — | — |
| Eli T. | 1st · 1:48.20 | — | — | — | — | 5th · 34.90 | 3rd · 1:55.40 |
B marks a swim that beats the swimmer's own seed. BR marks a swim that beats the event record. Both flags follow through to the export.
Dashboards
Between meets, not on deck.
Six KPI cards, trend charts, and the tag engine that finds Monday's practice plan for you.
Sample data"Turns is our #1 issue across 9–10s" — that's Monday's practice plan. Cut the same tags by age group, by stroke, or over the season, and watch the bar shrink after you coach it.
Tables
Design principles
Built for wet hands and a bright deck.
Liquid glass
Translucent, layered panels that sit over content instead of boxing it in. Light blues and pinks, never a flat sheet of color.
Big tap targets
Wet hands, fast taps, moving between heats. Hitting the wrong swimmer is worse than scrolling, so targets stay big.
Legible in the sun
Every glass panel that carries text gets real blur plus a mostly-opaque ground — never body text over unblurred glass.
Light and dark, both real
Both themes ship as complete palettes, not an inverted afterthought — light blues and pinks either way.