Visual Basic school project - vba

Question

Visual Basic is not my primary language and I am trying to help my son with a school project and failing miserably. The program is suppose to read a file, create an ID and save it to disk. Everything works fine except for the last 2 procedures, determine the minimum swim time, (It does that) but I am trying to assign the firstName of the user to the fastestSwimmer and in the last procedure display the winner and min time.
the file it is reading is just a text file with formatted as FirstName,Surname,Age and Gender.
My fastest Swimmer is always passing a null reference to the method. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
this is the whole program:
Public Class Form1
Private Sub StartBtn_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles StartBtn.Click
Dim firstName(5) As String
Dim surname(5) As String
Dim age(5) As String
Dim gender(5) As String
Dim swimID(5) As String
Dim time(5) As Single
Dim fastestSwimmer As String
Dim minTime As Single
'Call Procedures
Call GetDetails(firstName, surname, age, gender)
Call CalcSwimID(swimID, firstName, surname, age, gender)
Call RaceTimes(time, firstName, surname)
Call CalcWinner(time, firstName, fastestSwimmer, minTime)
'Call WinnersCircle(fastestSwimmer, minTime)
End Sub
'Get details from reading a file
Private Shared Sub GetDetails(ByVal firstName As String(), ByVal surname As String(), ByVal age As String(), ByVal gender As String())
Dim filename As String
filename = "C:/Users/rk/source/repos/CleanFolder/SwimersChampionShip/details.txt"
FileOpen(1, filename, OpenMode.Input)
For counter = 1 To 5
Input(1, firstName(counter))
Input(1, surname(counter))
Input(1, age(counter))
Input(1, gender(counter))
Next
FileClose(1)
End Sub
'Create a Swimmers ID and save it back to disk
Private Shared Sub CalcSwimID(ByRef swimID As String(), ByRef firstName As String(), ByRef surname As String(), ByRef Age As String(), ByRef gender As String())
Dim genderAscii(5) As Integer
Dim firstCharacter(5) As String
For counter = 1 To 5
firstCharacter(counter) = firstName(counter).Substring(0, 1)
genderAscii(counter) = Asc(gender(counter))
swimID(counter) = genderAscii(counter) & "-" & firstCharacter(counter) & surname(counter) & "-" & Age(counter)
Next
Dim savedFile As String
savedFile = ("C:/Users/rk/source/repos/CleanFolder/SwimersChampionShip/competitorsID.txt")
FileOpen(1, savedFile, OpenMode.Output)
For counter = 1 To 5
PrintLine(1, swimID(counter))
Next
FileClose(1)
End Sub
' Gets the race times by input box
Private Shared Sub RaceTimes(ByRef time As Single(), ByRef firstName As String(), ByRef surname As String())
For counter = 1 To 5
time(counter) = InputBox(" Please enter the swim times for " & firstName(counter) & " " & surname(counter))
Next
'MsgBox(time)
End Sub
'This will calculate the winner
Private Sub CalcWinner(ByRef time As Single(), ByRef firstName As String(), ByVal fastestSwimmer As String, ByRef minTime As Single)
'MsgBox(time(1))
minTime = time(1) And fastestSwimmer = firstName(1)
For counter = 2 To 5
If time(counter) < minTime Then
minTime = time(counter) And fastestSwimmer = firstName(counter)
End If
Next
'MsgBox(minTime)
End Sub
' Displays winner of the race to the winners circle, Gold medal will be sent by mail!
Private Sub WinnersCircle(ByRef fastestSwimmer As String, ByRef minTime As Single)
ListBox1.Items.Add("Congradulations " & fastestSwimmer & " you are the winner your time was " & minTime & " seconds. A new world record!")
End Sub
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
Me.Close()
End Sub
Private Sub ListBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles ListBox1.SelectedIndexChanged
End Sub
End Class

Answer 1

In the CalcWinner method you use AND in the wrong way:
Private Sub CalcWinner(ByRef time As Single(), ByRef firstName As String(), ByVal
fastestSwimmer As String, ByRef minTime As Single)
'MsgBox(time(1))
minTime = time(1)
fastestSwimmer = firstName(1)
For counter = 2 To 5
If time(counter) < minTime Then
minTime = time(counter)
fastestSwimmer = firstName(counter)
End If
Next
'MsgBox(minTime)
End Sub
When you write
minTime = time(1) And fastestSwimmer = firstName(1)
VB will ADD the first time ( time(1)) and fastestSwimmer = firstName(1) which is 0 because fastestSwimmer is not equal to firstName(1) so that evaluates to 0