SplitTrackTLDR
"Meet management" means two different things to high school coaches. If you're hosting a large invite with photo finish, scoreboards, and multiple timing stations, you need professional desktop software like Hy-Tek. If you're running your own team's meets and practices, across both track and cross country, from your phone, you need a mobile-first program app like Split Track. Most high school coaches need the second one far more often than the first.
The two types of "meet management"
Before comparing tools, it helps to be honest about which problem you're solving.
Hosting a large invitational. You need heats, flights, seeding algorithms, photo finish integration, scoreboard output, and award labels. This is meet director software. Hy-Tek Meet Manager is the industry standard here. FinishLynx users expect it. If you host a 30-team invite every spring, you need this stack.
Running your program day to day. You need event assignments for your athletes, a way to capture times and splits on a phone, results shared with the team in real time, and practice plans, whether it's a track interval session or a cross country long run, that athletes can see before they arrive. This is program management software. Most coaches need this every single week across both seasons, not just on big-meet days.
The mistake coaches make is buying or subscribing to meet director software when they really need program management software.
Best for large invitationals: Hy-Tek Meet Manager
Hy-Tek Meet Manager (ACTIVE Hy-Tek) is the dominant tool for running large track meets. It handles seeding, heat sheets, performance lists, scoring, results publishing, photo finish interfaces, and multi-user network setups for clerking tables and field event stations. If you are the host school and you need your meet to run on a professional timing system, Hy-Tek is the right call.
The tradeoff: it's desktop software, it requires Windows, and it's built for running a meet, not managing a season. Practice planning, athlete workouts, parent communication, and mobile-first timing are outside its scope.
Best for running your program: Split Track
Split Track is built for the other 90% of a coaching week, across both track and cross country. Everything lives on your phone: practices, meets, roster, chat, tasks, and athlete performance.
On meet day, you assign events, capture times and splits live, invite a parent to help time a field event or finish line from their own phone, and share results with athletes the moment a race is done.
On practice days, you build the workout in the Practice Planner, run it live, and athletes see exactly what they hit against their goal. Works for track interval sessions and XC long runs alike.
All week, the team stays connected through announcements, scoped chat threads, RSVP and attendance tracking, and task reminders for physicals and gear.
Split Track doesn't try to replace Hy-Tek for a 30-team invite with automatic timing. It replaces the clipboard, the group text, the practice spreadsheet, and the notebook you lose on the bus.
What about Athletic.net?
Athletic.net sits in a third category: results database and meet entry platform. Coaches use it because their state or conference requires it for entries and because it maintains a long public record of athlete marks. It's not really meet management software in the operational sense. It's where results go after the meet.
Many programs run Athletic.net for entries and public results, Split Track for program management, and Hy-Tek only when they're the host school. Those tools don't compete with each other as much as they cover different parts of the season.
How to choose
| Your situation | Best tool |
|---|---|
| Hosting a large invite with auto timing | Hy-Tek Meet Manager |
| Running your own T&F or XC meets from your phone | Split Track |
| Publishing results and managing entries | Athletic.net |
| Daily practice planning and live splits | Split Track |
| Athlete workouts, parent comms, team chat | Split Track |
Try Split Track free
If your meet management problem is really a program management problem, Split Track is built for it, across both seasons. Download on the App Store or Google Play. First month is free. Questions: [email protected] · (801) 310-7135.