Customer stories


Aggressive Skaters Association

FileMaker Keeps Track of Aggressive Skaters

They aren't just in-line skaters -- they're Aggressive Skaters. Skaters who compete for points and prestige on a professional scale. Stunts and spills, thrills and chills -- and above all, speed. Intense, glorious speed.

And keeping track of these breathtaking athletes requires a database program that's just as fast, just as flexible -- FileMaker Pro, the award winning database software from FileMaker, Inc.

Worldwide inline skating competition, at both the amateur and professional levels, is sanctioned by the California-based Aggressive Skaters Association. And they're taking this exciting, fast-growing sport out of the parking lots and into the spotlight. The ASA has developed a standardized judging system, a program for certifying judges, and it oversees professional and amateur competitive circuits, in which skaters are meticulously rated and ranked. As the ASA has grown in recent years, so has the complexity of this system. 'At first, ' observes ASA executive director Todd Shays, 'we used to use an enormous Excel spreadsheet to document individual skaters -- and it took an average of two and a half days to update the official rankings!'

Needless to say, that system was much too slow for a sport built on speed. That's when Todd realized that the same FileMaker Pro software he was already using to store data from competitive events could be used as the foundation for a near-automatic ranking and rating system. With help from developer Russell Kohn of Chaparral Software and Consulting Services, the ASA ended up with a FileMaker Pro-based system that reduced the ranking-and-rating process from two and a half days -- to forty-seven seconds!

'It's a really cool system,' boasts Todd. 'It's fully relational, so you can go to any athlete and bring up his entire history with just a click. Or, you can search specific competitive events and examine the performance data in any number of different ways.'

This flexibility has added real zip to the ASA's marketing efforts -- as any fan knows, statistics are the lifeblood of any competitive sport. With marketable rating and ranking of its athletes -- coupled, of course, with adrenaline-pumping action -- the ASA's events have already become favorites on the ESPN and ESPN2 cable channels, and now NBC-TV has gotten in onthe act with its exciting new Gravity Games. At all these events, FileMaker Pro keeps the numbers crunching.



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Todd Shays
Executive Director
Aggressive Skaters Association
310-823-1865 ext 301
shays@asaskate.com


Russell Kohn
Developer
Chaparral Software & Consulting Services Inc.
818-225-1247
russ@chapsoft.com


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • They aren't just in-line skaters -- they're Aggressive skaters. Skaters who compete for points and prestige on a professional scale. Needing a fast, flexible database program to keep track of these skaters, California-based Aggressive Skaters Association chose FileMaker Pro.
Industry
  • Creative Markets
  • Entertainment
  • Non-Profit