If you’re hosting a league championship or a 20-team invitational, yes – hire a timing company. For everything else, keep reading.
I’m a coach at a small school in Sacramento who’s been running my own meets for almost four years. Here’s what I’ve learned about when you actually need a timing company – and when you don’t.
What You’re Actually Paying For
A timing company brings FAT hardware, trained operators, meet management software, live results, and scoreboards. For a big invitational with 500 athletes, that’s worth every penny. You’re paying $600-$1,200+ per meet for someone to handle everything so you can focus on coaching.
But here’s the question: for a Wednesday dual meet with 3 schools and 120 kids, do you need all of that?
There’s another problem that doesn’t get talked about enough: availability. Good timing companies book up fast. They prioritize large invitationals and championship meets because that’s where the money is. A 3-school dual meet on a Wednesday afternoon? That’s often not worth their time. So you’re not really choosing between a timing company and doing it yourself – you’re choosing between doing it yourself and hand-timing with stopwatches. That’s the real comparison.
What Race Day Looks Like When You Run It Yourself
Here’s how a typical dual meet works at our school.
Before the meet, I set up events, import rosters, and assign athlete numbers through RaceApp’s web dashboard. Takes about 15 minutes. I print out rosters with numbers and bring those to the meet with a stack of Tyvek wristbands and Sharpies.
On race day, my iPad goes on a tripod at the finish line. RaceApp’s FAT Timer app records at up to 240fps, triggered automatically by the starter’s gun. After each race, the operator scrubs through frame-by-frame and taps each finish. Times accurate past 1/100th of a second – not certified for championships, but way more accurate than handheld stopwatches. The whole hardware setup costs about $200-$300. The app is free and $99/season for unlimited exports.
Don’t want FAT? Hand timing works too. Volunteers write down times or bib numbers, and you can type results in manually, paste from a clipboard, scan a printout with OCR – snap a photo of handwritten numbers and let the AI read them.
As times go in, they’re live on a public results page. Parents follow along on their phones via a QR code posted at the meet. Scoring updates automatically. Field events get entered live by helpers who scan a QR code on their phone and become a temporary admin for that meet – no app to download, no account to create.
After the meet, export to Athletic.net format and upload. No more spending hours transposing hand results to spreadsheets and fighting the format.
A 150-kid middle school meet, start to finish, in under two hours. I’ve done it many of times.
When to Hire a Timing Company
I’m not here to tell you timing companies are not worth it. They totally are. There are meets where you absolutely should hire one:
- League championships and conference finals – higher stakes, more teams, more scrutiny on results
- Invitationals (10+ teams, 500+ athletes) – the logistics get complex
- Any meet where certified FAT is required for records or qualifying standards
- When you just want to coach – some meets, you don’t want to think about timing at all
The iPad FAT setup I use is accurate past 1/100th of a second, but it’s not certified for championship-level meets. That’s fine, especially for middle schools. Championships are maybe 1 or 2 meets per season. The others – dual meets, small invitationals, practice meets, time trials, any meet where the alternative is hand-timing because you couldn’t book a timing company anyway – that’s where doing it yourself makes sense.
“But What About…”
“Our results won’t be on Athletic.net.” They will. RaceApp exports to Athletic.net format. You can upload your results in just a few minutes. No more spending hours transposing hand results to spreadsheets and fighting the format.
“Hand-timing is fine. Why change?” It works, but it’s inconsistent. Different volunteers get different times on the same race. There’s no automatic scoring, no live results for parents to follow, and you’re doing more manual work on race day. RaceApp supports hand-timing too – it just makes entering and publishing results faster.
“We already have a timing company for our invitational.” Great – keep them for that. Use RaceApp for the other meets where you’re currently hand-timing or not hosting at all.
“I’m not technical enough for this.” If you can manage a roster, build a practice schedule, and send parent emails, you can use RaceApp. The meet setup takes about 15 minutes. On race day, your helpers handle timing and results entry. You coach.
“What about field events?” Give a helper a phone. They scan a QR code. They’re now entering results live from the pit or the ring. No app to download. Train in a few minutes. You can also use our paper templates and scan them in after the meet – the AI decodes the handwritten results and imports the data.
Getting Started
If you want to see what DIY timing looks like in practice, here’s how I have my setup dialed in:
- DIY FAT Timing Setup: My Race Day Gear for Under $300
- DIY Printing Timer: A $30 Alternative to the $300 Seiko
- DIY Air Horn Starter (~$55)
- Portable Wireless PA System (Under $150)
- How to Desensitize Your Mic for Reliable FAT Timing
I’ve been doing this for almost four years and I’ve timed hundreds of races with this setup. The first meet has a learning curve. By the second or third, it’s routine.
RaceApp is free for meets under 75 athletes. No credit card required.