Small software for
high school running.
One person in Norwalk, Ohio, who coaches cross country and track and writes the software the sport keeps doing without. Two tools so far. Both are free to use, and both are built for a laptop in a park with one bar of signal.
Free to use · Nothing to install · Purchase orders welcome
Currently shipping
CourseChalk
Draw the course. Print the meet.
PaceChalk In testing
Splits in. Answers out.
What is here
Two tools, both for running
CourseChalk
Trace your cross country course on an aerial map and it measures itself to the meter, so you find out it is 4,860 before the coaches do. It colors the line mile by mile, then prints the flyer, the coaches packet and the parents packet with your course maps already in them.
The whole app is free. A season pass at $49 removes the credit line from what you print.
PaceChalk
Type in mile splits, import a results file, or pull a race off the sites you already use. Then read what the numbers say: pacing across a race, progression across a season, personal bests, and who moved past whom and at which mile.
It signs in with Google, keeps working when the signal goes, and syncs when it comes back. In testing this season.
How these are built
Five rules that do not move
- It works with no signal. A county park at 7am on meet morning has one bar. Nothing you need at that moment waits on a network call.
- Your work stays yours. Your meet plan is a file on your own machine, or a record in your own account. Nothing is sold and nothing is tracked.
- Free first. The whole tool works before any money changes hands. You pay to take my name off what you print, not to unlock the thing you came for.
- Public data where it exists. Aerial imagery from the USGS National Map, address search from the US Census Bureau — public domain, and free to keep free.
- One person answers the email. That is the whole support department, and it is why the answer usually comes the same day.
For athletic departments
Purchase orders are welcome
Email ethanbores@gmail.com and you will get a W-9, a written quote and an invoice the same day — Net 30, with your PO number on it and numbers that match the quote exactly.
A card works too, and $49 clears most purchasing card limits in one step with no PO at all. Payment runs through Stripe as merchant of record, so sales tax is collected and remitted correctly, and a tax-exempt district can enter its exemption at checkout.
Who this is
Ethan Bores, Norwalk, Ohio
I coach cross country and track at Norwalk High School and write software for a living. These tools started as things I wanted for our own meets and our own runners, which is the only reason they fit the job as closely as they do.
Everything here is run alongside a season, not instead of one. If something is broken on a Saturday morning, say so — I am probably at a meet too.
Something your meet still does by hand?
Tell me what it is. The next tool comes out of somebody's complaint.