NNSL (Mar 20/98) - By week's end, Sara Turner will have spent much of the Yellowknife Arctic Winter Games plugging data into a database.

The Grade 12 Sir John Franklin student puts in about five hours per day as one of 18 computing centre volunteers.

She sifts through Monday's cross-country skiing results, looks up and says working Tuesday was more fun because there were more results to type in.

Monday was largely sorting through faxes.

Computing centre co-ordinator Brian Gelinas whisks in, finds an empty terminal and with a few clicks of a mouse finds the needed information. He then relays the goods via cell phone.

Medal results, lagging slightly behind radio, are available on the Game's Web site (www.98.awg.ca).

"We can only move as fast as different venues fax us the results," Turner says.

"Radio is probably right on the spot and can give the results right away."

Detailed results including athletes' names, finishing positions, identification numbers and times will be available soon.

Other online connections include a look at the Games mascot, the city of Yellowknife, a history of the Games, available Games merchandise, an events schedule and a look at the host society, complete with profiles of directors and photos.

A similar profile data base was used to make athletes' laminated name cards. Each athlete has a profile with photo and the screens were printed out before laminating.

The busy AWG results centre is a micro version of centres in other international Games such as the Olympics or Commonwealth Games.

"This is much the same, only on a much smaller level," says Gelinas, who works as a technical consultant.

But on whether co-ordinating the computing facility at the Games is a good training ground for organizing the much-bigger meets, Gelinas would only laugh.

"Maybe if I did it full time."