2020 was interesting to say the least! If your team is like most, you either had to reluctantly cancel your season; or in an effort to provide some sense of normalcy for your athletes, you expedited a plan for a socially-distant or virtual meet season.
Plans for your 2021 season may be up in the air, but we want to help ensure your site is ready for your setup and you know how to reach everyone that may or may not have been part of your 2020 season.
>>IMPORTANT NOTES:
1) Do not update your Season until you've reviewed this article. If you have, just set the season back to 2020 for now (assuming you have not opened registration).
2) Immediately check to ensure your WePay account is in good standing. Although rare, there are times when WePay needs to request information due to KYC (know your customer) banking regulations, or disables your account if inactive more than 540 days, so it’s best to confirm at the start. This is found under Manage Team > Settings > WePay Configuration
>>Tip: Don't save this until right before opening registration.
After completing any necessary 2020 Covid cleanup steps below, we recommend that you go through the standard Teams: New Season Transition Checklist as you continue setting up for your 2021 season.
Covered in this Article:
Select the scenario that most closely matches your 2020 season:
- Normal Season in 2020
- Partial Season in 2020 (Social Distancing or Virtual Meets)
- Canceled Season in 2020
Normal Season in 2020
If your team was able to move forward with a normal season, AND you expect to do the same this season, hooray! ➞ See Teams: New Season Transition Checklist to set up for your 2021 season as usual.
>>Note: You may want to contact your insurance provider to discuss any Covid liability updates and update your liability forms to account for these changes.
➧ Holding Virtual Meets in 2021? If you would like to use SwimTopia's Meet Maestro meet management software➞ See our Meet Maestro - Virtual Meets article. You'll find links to pre-recorded videos and simple setup and meet day instructions. You'll still want to follow the Teams: New Season Transition Checklist to set up for your 2021 season.
If your team has never used Meet Maestro, we're happy to answer any questions you may have ➞ contact the SwimTopia Customer Happiness Team
Partial Season in 2020 (Social Distancing or Virtual Meets)
>>Note: Once you have reviewed each topic below and performed any necessary actions, we recommend using the standard Teams: New Season Transition Checklist as you set up for your 2021 season. Depending on how your 2021 season shapes up, this checklist may not need to be followed exactly, but it helps make sure you think about each area needing attention. We're happy to answer any questions you may have ➞ contact the SwimTopia Customer Happiness Team
- ① Season Updates
- ② Registration Form for 2021
- ③ Communication in 2021
- ④ Meets & Events
- ⑤ Meet Templates
- ⑥ ➞ Next Step
① Season Updates
You will update your season as usual since you likely opened registration and followed a meet schedule in some capacity. Follow the steps as outlined in the Teams: New Season Transition Checklist.
② Registration Form for 2021
Depending on your 2021 season plans, you can either copy your 2020 registration form, or you may need to copy a previous season form if your 2020 form was very different from the information you usually collect in a standard swim season. You can also create a new registration form from scratch, but it's much faster to copy an old form and edit as needed.
>>Note: You may want to contact your insurance provider to discuss any Covid liability updates and update your liability forms to account for these changes. To insert a Covid waiver into your registration form, see How to Insert Acknowledgements.
Either way, you can do this by going to Manage Team > Registrations > Copy or New Registration Form button
③ Communication in 2021
➧ Reaching your 2019 members
When your 2021 season is created and you're ready to open registration, you can send messages to your 2019 members to catch those that chose not to participate in your 2020 partial season, by going to Manage Team > Reports > Registration Details / Data Export and filter by your 2019 season (or whatever was previous to 2020). Once you generate the report, you'll see a button to Compose and send email.
➧ Reaching your 2020 members
Use "Members - Previous Season" in your communications to reach your 2020 registered families.
>>Tip: To ensure duplicate emails are not sent to the same families registered in 2019 and 2020, we highly recommend sending your communication to members from both seasons at once. After clicking on the Compose email button on the 2019 Registration Details report, add "Members - Previous Season" to the “To” field of the same email. If the steps are done in this order, you can include both groups in the same email and the system will remove any duplicates.
➧ Reaching your 2021 members
Once you open registration and members register for your upcoming season, you'll use the "Members" group to reach out to your current season's roster as usual.
④ Meets & Events
Depending on whether your 2020 times are considered official or not, on some or all of your meets, you'll want to consider what changes may need to be made at the meet level.
Settings to consider under Entry Rules of each 2020 meet:
- Only accept entry times since... - you may want to leave it at a 2019 date if 2020 is unofficial
- Results for this meet will be treated as official/unofficial for entry in later meets - If your 2020 times are not official, you can set those 2020 meets to "unofficial" so seed times are not used in your 2021 seeding.
To make either of these changes, go to Manage Team > Schedule > [Meet Name] > Meet Setup > Entry Rules, where you'll find the setting to treat the results as unofficial.
>>Note: If your meet is linked to a meet template and therefore locked, you'll need to unlink the template under the Events screen first so you can make this change to unofficial. Changing any setting in a meet template will propagate to future meets that are assigned to that template, but those changes will not modify the settings of any past meets.
⑤ Meet Templates
If you modified your Meet Templates to accommodate virtual meets, be sure to review and update your Entry Rules, Seeding & Scoring settings, etc. if anything has changed for 2021.
➧ Want to give aged-out athletes another season?
➞ See Aged-Out Athletes: Allowing Them to Register and Compete
➧ Holding Virtual Meets in 2021?
If you would like to use SwimTopia's Meet Maestro meet management software and did not do so in 2020 ➞ See our Meet Maestro - Virtual Meets article. You'll find links to pre-recorded videos and simple setup and meet day instructions. If your team has never used Meet Maestro, we're happy to answer any questions you may have ➞ contact the SwimTopia Customer Happiness Team
⑥ ➞ Next Step
Now we recommend using the standard Teams: New Season Transition Checklist as you set up for your 2021 season.
Canceled Season in 2020
>>Note: Once you have reviewed each topic below and perforfmed any necessary actions, we recommend using the standard Teams: New Season Transition Checklist as you set up for your 2021 season. Depending on how your 2021 season shapes up, this checklist may not need to be followed exactly, but it helps make sure you think about each area needing attention. We're happy to answer any questions you may have ➞ contact the SwimTopia Customer Happiness Team
- ① 2020 Registration Status
- ② Season Updates
- ③ Registration Form for 2021
- ④ Communication in 2021
- ⑤ Meets & Events
- ⑥ ➞ Next Step
① 2020 Registration Status
➧ We did not open registrations prior to canceling
Okay great. Your billing records and reports will be accurate going forward, since you will not need to worry about cleaning out registrations for a season that never took place, since none exist.
➧ We had opened registrations prior to canceling
Hopefully you ended up closing your registration form and rejecting those registrations, since this ensures accurate billing and reports, but if not, we suggest doing so before updating your season. This step is a quick click of a button for each registration.
If you don’t reject the registrations:
- Your revenue reports won’t reconcile
- The Seasons on Team report will be incorrect
- The Rookie Athletes report will be incorrect if you had any new athletes
- The Non-returning Athletes report may be incorrect (i.e. new athlete registered in 2020 that isn't coming back in 2021, but was really never really part of the team since the season was canceled)
Go to Manage Team > Registration > "View Registrations" for the appropriate registration form > Select the Reject button for each registration.
>>Note: Once you reject all registrations, you will only see Red badge Admins and those assigned to specific Roles under your People tab.
We'll assume you've already dealt with any required refunds, but if you still need to do so ➞ See WePay Refunds & Your Registrations (COVID-19)
② Season Updates
➧ Unofficial 2020 Season
If you've used SwimTopia before your 2020 season, we recommend you set the 2020 season to "Unofficial." This will be helpful for communication with your members (details below), and you can run reports that will exclude unofficial seasons.
Go to Manage Team > Seasons > Select the Edit button > check This season is 'unofficial'
➧ Creating your 2021 Season
You may be asking yourself, can I just rename the 2020 Season to 2021 instead of creating a new 2021 Season? We do not recommend this IF you have any data created in your 2020 Season, such as:
- Calendar events
- Registrations
- Roster/people
- Sponsors
- Roles
③ Registration Form for 2021
You're probably wondering if you can just rename your 2020 registration form to use the same form for your 2021 season, right? Well, if you never opened the 2020 registration form, that will be fine. If you did open your 2020 registration and have registered families in your Rejected column, we suggest copying the form to create a new one, so your records and reports will be accurate.
>>Note: You may want to contact your insurance provider to discuss any Covid liability updates and update your liability forms to account for these changes. To insert a Covid waiver into your registration form, see How to Insert Acknowledgements.
You can also create a new registration form from scratch, but it's much faster to copy an old form and edit as needed. Either way, you can do this by going to Manage Team > Registrations > Copy or New Registration Form button
④ Communication in 2021
➧ Reaching your 2019 members
When your 2021 season is created and you're ready to open registration, you can send messages to "Members - Previous Season," and your communications will go to your 2019 registered families (or the first official season prior to 2020), since "unofficial" seasons are skipped (this is assuming you made your 2020 Season unofficial as recommended in step 1 above).
>>Note: If you already updated your season and you want to reach your 2019 members, just go to Manage Team > Reports > Registration Details/Export Report and filter on 2019 registrations. Once you generate the report, you'll see a button to Compose and send email.
➧ Reaching your 2020 members
If you also need to contact the families who registered in 2020 (i.e. new families registered that were not in your 2019 roster), you can do so through the Reports tab.
Go to Manage Team > Reports > Registration Details/Export Report and select only "Rejected" registrations. Once you generate the report, you'll see a button to Compose and send email.
>>Tip: To ensure duplicate emails are not sent to the same families registered in 2019 and 2020, we highly recommend sending your communication to members from both seasons at once. After clicking on the Compose email button on the report, add the "Members - Previous Season" to the “to” field of the same email. If the steps are done in this order, you can include both groups in the same email and the system will remove any duplicates.
➧ Reaching your 2021 members
Once you open registration and members register for your upcoming season, you'll use the "Members" group to reach out to your current season's roster as usual.
⑤ Meets & Events
➧ Our meet schedule was imported by our league
Your league will likely just import your 2021 schedule. So unless you really like cleaning up your site and do not want your parents finding past meets/events on the meet calendar (parents view) that never took place, then for simplicity sake, we suggest you just leave your 2020 schedule as is. If you want to clean house, you can hide your 2020 meets/events by checking the "Hide from public calendar" option under your meet details screen (Edit within your meet).
>>Note: Imported meets cannot be removed manually, so hiding is your only option.
➧ We created meets using Meet Templates OR from scratch
In this case, you can proceed with one of the options below:
- Leave your 2020 schedule as is and create a new 2021 schedule: Unless you really like cleaning up your site and do not want your parents finding past meets/events on the meet calendar (parents view) that never took place, then for simplicity sake, we suggest you just leave your 2020 schedule as is. No harm, no fowl.
- Hide or Remove your 2020 meets/events: If you want to clean house, you can either hide or remove your 2020 meets/events. Hide them by checking the "Hide from public calendar" option under your meet details screen (Edit within your meet), or Remove them by clicking the red "Remove" button at the top right when in the meet/event.
- Edit your 2020 schedule to change the various dates (below) to match your 2021 season dates. For meets, these settings will be found under the Meet Details (Edit link), Status, Entry Rules, and Eligibility within each meet.
-
- Meet start date, end date (Edit Screen)
- Meet age-up date (Edit Screen)
- Meet entries open/due by (Status Screen)
- Job signups open/due by (Status Screen)
- Only accept entry times since (Meet Setup > Entry Rules) - [see below]
- Participation Requirement "Since Date" (Meet Setup > Eligibility Rules) - [if used]
>>Note: if you have any meet entries, you'll want to remove those and start fresh, so it may be more efficient to just recreate the entire meet.
Entry Rules for 2021
If your Meet Templates or meets you entend to update or copy to use in 2021 have a date set for the "Only accept entry times since_____" you'll want to be sure you confirm this date is set to not include 2020 if you did not have a season.
➧ Want to give aged-out athletes another season?
➞ See Aged-Out Athletes: Allowing Them to Register and Compete
⑥ ➞ Next Step
Now we recommend using the standard Teams: New Season Transition Checklist as you set up for your 2021 season.
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