Thursday, October 10, 2013

Web Page 'O the Month

This month’s featured webpage … Deck Pass


Deck Pass seems like USA Swimming’s mild attempt at social media.  It automatically awards digital patches, based on what a swimmer does in the pool, and shares that information with selected friends.  They can see what’s going on in your swimming world and you can see what’s going on in theirs.  One can earn patches for all kinds of things, like setting a best time, meeting a goal, swimming in Arizona, or sillier things like getting a time that ends in 99.  The patches can be fun for young swimmers.


While the whole connect and share part of Deck Pass has limited value (opinion mine), Deck Pass as a whole has real value.  Deck Pass contains a swimmer’s entire swimming history … every time achieved, for every event swum, at every meet attended.   Well, at least sanctioned meets.  You won’t find results from the September DART intra-squad meet in there … it was just a practice meet.

In addition to the history repository, a swimmer can enter and track goal times.  They can see their IMX score and see how it ranks against others.  Hmmm, IMX scores … fodder for a future post.


One can create a free Deck Pass account on USA Swimming’s website with the link below.  You will want to create a separate account for each swimmer, as the creation process will allow the account to be associated with a particular swimmer's history.


Parents may also create an account, but it has little use beyond tracking orders from the USA Swimming online store.  It doesn’t let you link to your swimmer(s), like one would think.

Happy Patching!

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