Daktronics, the company that manufactured the timing system at the Liberty University pool, has released a statement regarding the faulty equipment that caused timing errors through Thursday morning’s session at the 2018 ISCA Junior National Cup hosted there. The statement doesn’t share many details, but sources at the meet have filled in the gaps between what the statement says.
The Statement from Daktronics:
Liberty University has alerted us to an issue with the aquatics timing system at their venue. We understand that accuracy in timing for these events is imperative at all levels of competition and have worked directly with the university to determine the cause of this issue and implement a resolution. The issue caused a delay at the beginning of events between the horn going off and the timer starting. Liberty University and the International Swim Coaches Association (ISCA) were properly following directions in setting up the system for the ISCA Junior National Championship Cup.
A short-term resolution has been implemented to the existing equipment to ensure accuracy for the remaining events of the meet. Daktronics will be sending new horn starts to replace the affected product at Liberty University. In addition, we have communicated with the officials to establish the corrected times for the previous events. Daktronics will continue to stand behind Liberty University to provide the necessary customer support.
A representative from the company was on hand at the meet on Thursday. The issue is reported to have involved a miswiring of the timing boxes that both control the communication between the starter and the swimmers. For those unfamiliar with starting systems, the microphone has a button on it that controls the starting sound that begins the race, and that electronically triggers the timing system to begin. The internal mis-wire of the starters box, which has a hand-soldering manufacturing process, was causing an approximate .39-second delay in the start of the timing system, which was making times for races clock .39 seconds faster than they were actually being swum.
This same effect can be caused by a the microphone being plugged in to the wrong socket of the starter’s box, but meet organizers say that this was not the case at this week’s ISCA meet. Instead, an internal miswiring in the microphone caused a similar effect.
The problem was seen in 2 of the 3 microphones that the new Liberty University facility uses, making it impossible to determine which microphone was used at which meet. That’s significant because Liberty hosted an NCAA Last Chance Qualifying event in February where 5 female swimmers earned qualifying times for the NCAA Championship meet. 3 of those times, even if they were .39 seconds slower, still would have been fast enough to earn an invite to NCAAs, while 2 would not have been. None of those 5 swimmers wound up scoring individually at NCAAs.
That same last-chance meet was declared not “bona fide” competition for the men’s team from East Carolina because they were the only men’s team competing. The error with the timing system this week validates the NCAAs requirement to have multiple teams competing at a meet, because while not a perfect fix, it does create an environment of oversight for results.
Daktronics’ statement says that they will “continue to stand behind Liberty Uniersity to provide the necessary customer support.” The statement also implies that Daktronics feels comfortable that they know how to adjust the times done with the faulty equipment, and coaches were reportedly told on Friday morning that .396 would be added to all swims for the 1st two days. USA Swimming tells us on Saturday morning that their times people are still working on it and have been coordinating with the rules chair, Daktronics, and the meet site for 2 days to come up with a decision.
Updated: Daktronics told SwimSwam on Friday afternoon that they “believe this concern to be isolated,” but that “to ensure…best product performance and customer experience, they are further investigating and will reach out to customers directly if needed.” They also say thata current inventory has been checked and is “performing correctly.”
Update 2: the latest information is that the error was in the starter’s box, not the microphone.
What should we believe?
– on Thursday afternoon it was stated the issue was a start button/mic was plugged into the wrong socket?
– on Friday morning it was stated that 2 of 3 start buttons//mics were manually soldered incorrectly? And they didn’t know which button/mic was used for which race or session?
– the latest is that the issue is its a issue in the the actual starter box?
What should we believe?
Someone needs to do a race by race analysis – comparing stop watch times to daktronic times! The meet officials should not be able to just add 0.396 to all times before the Thursday finals.
For example – on Thursday AM, the 16U… Read more »
I was on deck on Thursday evening before the meet and I was told by the referee that it was due to a wiring issue. The rumor on Thursday morning was that it could be due to the plugs in the wrong sockets but they verified that they were indeed plugged into the correct sockets. It looks like they adjusted times by 0.39 except for the times on the Women’s side prelims on Thursday morning. I’m assuming they determined those times were unaffected? The corrected meet results are now displayed in the USA Swimming database.
Did any of the adults at Dak or Liberty (or coaches?) consider the damage done to the youth swimmers in releasing this info DURING the meet. Legitimate mistakes happen. Adjustments to times of course, should be corrected. But deal with it Monday. How does it help the swimmers DURING the AG meet, who did nothing wrong and trained hard, tapered, (traveled at expense), when you notify them of “whoopsy your time was actually slower” & “ sorry, that record actually wasn’t broken” ? They still have events to swim! Poor judgement by all.
While I agree this info could affect some swimmers, the issue was already being raised by many here on SwimSwam as well as at the meet; I feel like it would be better confirming that there was an issue rather than having the swimmers wonder throughout the rest of the meet if their times would even be valid at all.
Agreed. I think it does everyone a disservice to hold back information. The right thing to do was acknowledge the problem.
Agreed —- I know the big news from this meet was the timing malfunction — but fans and family should go back and watch some of the races when they appear on florida swim etc There were some impressive swims had by all. Kids settled in and a lot of time was legitimately dropped throughout the meet. Lots of PBS and great relay swims. There was also a great spirit among the swimmers. They’re all in the same age range and new friends were made and prom proposals had. There is nothing better than to see your kids smiling with their teammates and new friends. Think of all the not so great things they could be doing. Think of the… Read more »
What days are they talking about? The meet was going on for 3 days before anyone caught this? Now the entire meet has been ran with swimmers actually questioning times, and wondering what their new time might be? No official announcement made publicly but everyone is suppose to keep swimming as if nothing happened.
*The meet was going on for 3 days before anyone in meet management checked the starting system. Speculation started on Day 1. Meet management didn’t take action until coaches threatened to leave the meet.
When they say the ‘first two days” do they mean Tuesday and Wednesday or is Thursday included?
They are talking about all sessions BEFORE Thursday Finals. The problem seems to have been corrected as of the finals on Thursday night. But Thursday Prelims are definitely part of the problem.
This is a good process for swimming to see. We love our sport but the industry around it is extremely immature. Daktronics, Colorado etc have no reason to innovate or make their products, and our experience, better. The reason is, it would cannabalize their own products. No reason to change means no innovation, no improved experience for the market, and no maturation in our sport.
I can’t see how any of the records set there would be considered valid. It isn’t the fault of the kids but if a similar failure of the faculty, say the pool being 24.5 yards long, then the times would be invalid for record purposes. Ok maybe that is a more severe case than it is but who knows if there was variation in the results. Would be hard to accept any of the records in my mind.
I think it’s a lot different because a backup system exists–namely the manual times. The rules cover the procedure to use for a timing malfunction. On the other hand there is no provision for correcting for a short pool.
I hope they include the college coaches from the Last Chance Invite in that lawsuit. This could have been prevented for the entire ISCA meet if even one college coach spoke up.
I fail to see what you would claim a coach from the Last Chance Invite has done to warrant a lawsuit against them or what damages have been sustained. Also wouldn’t you just sue the school because the coach is just an agent for the school and the school has more money than a coach. Also weren’t most of the schools at the Last Chance Invite public, state-run universities, so wouldn’t they be immune to a lawsuit like this because of sovereign immunity? Also the coaches don’t set the timing system up and don’t maintain it throughout the meet, so what would they have done to cause damages sustained by someone?
This is Daktronics covering for the admins running the meet….
I guess that’s possible but it seems like a strange business strategy for them to admit to selling a faulty product when they didn’t. The only reason I could think of that they would do that is to convince potential customers that if those customers screw things up Daktronics will cover for them, too.