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What Do I Need to Know for Water Polo Setups?It is easy to say that a Water Polo game is a Water Polo game but there are actually quite a lot of small differences between games. If you want to have a successful water polo setup, the System6 has flexibility and ease of use. You can set your particular parameters in game SETUPS. The obvious ones are length of time for periods, shot clock, break, timeouts and player ejections. It might be helpful to explain a few of the more subtle ones. Horns: You may select the length of time that the horns will blow every time they are activated. You may also select which scoreboard channel will carry the sound, this allows you to send both game and shot horns to the same physical horn should you only have one horn to use. While we always recommend separate horns for shot clock and game time we also understand that this is not always possible. Time rounding for the scoreboard: Because the scoreboard only shows time in whole seconds you need to decide how you wish to round the fractions of seconds, up or down. No matter which way you round the scoreboard time, the length of the period will always be exactly the length you have asked for. The visual problem comes at either the beginning or the end of the period. Most scoreboards will post the time exactly the way it reads even though they only show the minutes and seconds. At the beginning of a period the game time is 7:00.00 and 7:00 will be displayed. One hundredth of a second later the game time will be 6:59.99 and 6:59 will be displayed. 99 hundredths of a second later at 6:59.00 we still have 6:59 being displayed. So far no problem. As the game winds down to 0:02.00 we see :02 displayed. At :01.99 we see :01 on the board. At :001.00 we still have :01 showing on the board. When the time goes to :00.99 the board will display :00, and it will stay on the board for another full second. When the game time goes to :00.00 the horn will blow and the period will be over. Visually the board has shown 0 for a full second before the game has ended and the horn has sounded. This method of displaying time on the board is called truncation or rounding down. When we round up the scoreboard will display 7:00 at the start of the game, just like the round down method above, but at 6:59.99 it will still display 7:00 and will continue to do so until 6:59.00, at which time it will display 6:59. When you get to the end of the period :01 will show on the board from :01.00 until :00.00 at which time it will read :00 and the horn will sound. Obviously rounding down is the best way to show the time on the board so that the end of the period is when :00 goes up on the board and the horn blows simultaneously. The only bad part is that at the beginning of a period the board displays 7:00 and this number stays on the board for a full second before it showing 6:59. This has caused some persons to erroneously think that the clock did not start or that it started late. After this first second it behaves exactly as expected and does finish on 0. Shot Clock time at end of period: In the past, if there was a change of possession toward the end of a period (with less than 35 seconds left on the game clock), all manufacturers would either blank the shot clock or put up 35 seconds up on the shot clock. This makes no sense. We teach the players to always glance at the shot clock in order to know how much time they have to set up a play. Yet at crunch time, the end of a period, either the clock shows the wrong time or it goes blank. To help the players we have added the ability to automatically set the shot clock to exactly the same time as the game clock whenever the shot clock time would be greater than the remaining period time. From the main screen on the System6: Press the softkey GAME SETUPS The other options are to set the shot clock to "Full Shot" or to "Blank." When you set it to "Shot=Game Time" you will automatically have the shot clock set to exactly the same time as the game clock whenever there is a change of possession near the end of the period. Your players will love it. Bob Clauson is a nationally renowned authority in swimming and meet management. |
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