Seeding and Advancement

Purpose

Use the track and field seeding workflow to assign heats, lanes, and flights, review the live event queue, save rule defaults, preview layouts, make manual placement edits, and advance qualifiers from one round to the next.

Prerequisites

• Meet sport set to Indoor Track & Field or Outdoor Track & Field.
• Events created with the correct discipline.
• Entries imported or added before seeding.
• Rounds configured for events that use prelims, semis, or finals.
• Meet teams created if you plan to use team-lane seeding.

What Changed

The current seeding workflow is more than a single event screen. It now includes:

• a seeding queue with saved filters
• bulk seeding for eligible events
• an event workspace with queue navigation
• separate Save strategy and Save assignments behavior
• seeding-profile defaults that flow into meet and round rules
• support for round-level inheritance of max-per-heat or flight size
• team-lane seeding for lane-start running events
• advancement rules stored with the round seeding config instead of a separate rule table

Open the Seeding Queue

Open Seeding from the meet navigation.

The queue is the operator starting point for T&F seeding. It shows seedable events and rounds, plus enough status to decide what still needs work.

Use the filters to narrow the queue by:

• genre
• gender
• division

Those filters are saved and reused when you move between the queue and event workspaces.

Queue Actions

Depending on what is eligible, the queue can offer:

• Seed all eligible
• Seed visible
• Seed selected
• Open first event manually

Bulk actions only run for rows that are currently eligible to seed. An event can be skipped if:

• it has no entries
• no seeding rules are saved for that round
• the round has already started
• the round is completed

Use bulk seeding when many rounds already share the right defaults and you want 2Timer to write assignments without opening each event one at a time.

Use the event workspace when you need to review or tune an individual round.

Event Workspace Overview

Opening an event takes you into a single-scroll workspace for one round at a time.

The workspace keeps three jobs together:

1. rules and round settings
2. placements grid
3. advancement for later rounds

It also keeps quick navigation available:

• Previous
• Next
• collapsible filtered queue

The workspace follows the current saved queue filters, so next/previous navigation stays aligned with the filtered working list.

How Round Data Is Chosen

2Timer uses the correct source pool for the round you are seeding:

• round 1 uses that round’s current entries
• later rounds can seed from the prior round
• if a later round already has its own entries, those can become the working pool

This matters because round 2 and beyond may depend on prior-round results and advancement settings, not just the original entry list.

Strategy Versus Assignments

The workspace separates two different saves:

Save strategy

Use Save strategy when you want to store the round’s rules and round layout settings without writing heat or lane assignments yet.

This saves things like:

• heat or flight count
• max per heat or flight
• heat assignment method
• lane or position order
• start type
• teammate split
• advancement settings for the target round

Save assignments

Use Save and Next or Save and Done after the grid looks correct.

This writes the current placements back to the entries. If there is another seedable event in the filtered queue, 2Timer opens it automatically. Otherwise it returns to the queue.

Typical Single-Event Workflow

1. Open the event from the seeding queue.
2. Confirm the round and seed pool count.
3. Review planned heat or flight count and per-group capacity.
4. Expand Seeding rules and adjust the strategy.
5. Use Save strategy if you want these rules stored for the round.
6. Run Seed Round to preview the layout in the grid.
7. Review or edit placements manually if needed.
8. Use Save and Next or Save and Done to write assignments.

Core Seeding Rules

Depending on the event and start type, the workspace may let you control:

• assign groups by time or mark vs random
• fill groups as full vs balanced
• spread seeds vs pack fast sections
• heat or flight order
• group count
• max per heat or flight
• start type
• waterfall layout options
• lane or position order
• teammate split
• advancement method
• tie handling at the qualifier cutoff

Some controls hide automatically when they do not apply. For example:

• field events use flights and positions instead of track lanes
• non-lane starts simplify lane-order choices
• team-lane seeding hides teammate split

Seeding Option Reference

This section explains what each seeding option means in plain language.

Think of the controls in three layers:

• Assign groups decides which heat, section, or flight each entry goes into.
• Assign lanes or positions decides where each entry sits inside that group.
• Advancement decides who moves from one round into the next.

Assign Groups By

This control decides how entries are split across heats, sections, or flights.

Serpentine / balanced

Use this when you want the best seeds spread across groups as evenly as possible.

• fastest seeds are distributed across multiple heats or flights
• common choice for prelims when you want balanced competition
• works well with either fast-to-slow or slow-to-fast heat order

Best together (by seed)

Use this when you want the fastest athletes grouped more tightly.

• stronger seeds are packed into fewer groups
• common when you want a fast final section or stronger late heat
• this creates a clearer fast-vs-slower grouping than serpentine

Left-to-Right by Two

Use this when you want seed pairs to stay together as groups are filled.

• seeds are handled in pairs
• each pair is placed into the next target heat or flight
• this creates a specific paired distribution pattern instead of a pure snake

Alpha by Last Name

Use this when performance seed is not the organizing rule.

• groups are built alphabetically by athlete last name
• if a last name is missing, 2Timer falls back to team name
• lane or position order still applies inside each group

Alpha by Team

Use this when you want grouping to follow team order instead of seed order.

• groups are built alphabetically by team
• athlete names are used only as a stable tie-breaker
• lane or position order still applies inside each group

At random

Use this when you do not want seed-ranked grouping.

• entries are shuffled before groups are assigned
• heat order does not matter here
• this is useful for fully random preliminary grouping

Heat Or Flight Order

This control only matters for seed-ranked grouping methods such as serpentine, best together, and left-to-right by two.

It is ignored for:

• alpha by last name
• alpha by team
• at random

Fast-to-Slow

• strongest seeds land in the earliest heat or flight numbers
• example: the fastest section becomes Heat 1

Slow-to-Fast

• strongest seeds land in the last heat or flight
• example: the fastest section becomes the final heat

This choice changes numbering, not the race schedule itself.

Fill Heats Or Flights

This control affects how 2Timer recommends group count and group size.

Full heats / flights

• fills each group toward capacity before adding another
• usually creates fewer total groups
• can leave the last group much smaller than the others

Balanced heats / flights

• spreads entries as evenly as possible
• often creates cleaner, more even group sizes
• useful when you want fairness across all groups

Fill, balance last two

• fills early groups normally
• then balances the final two groups to avoid one tiny leftover group
• useful when full grouping would create an awkward tail heat or flight

Start Type

This control describes the physical start layout for running events.

Field events do not use this setting.

Lanes

• each athlete gets their own lane for the full race
• typical for sprints, hurdles, relays, and other lane-start races

Alleys (Shared Lane)

• multiple athletes share the same lane area
• common for some 800m formats
• assignment becomes more like seeded positions than ordinary lane ownership

Waterfall

• athletes start on a curved arc instead of separate full lanes
• common for longer races and some middle-distance formats
• additional waterfall settings may appear depending on the event

Waterfall Options

These options only appear when the start type is Waterfall.

Single Waterfall

• everyone starts from one curved waterfall line

Double Waterfall

• two waterfall lines are used
• extra options appear so you can control which line gets the top seeds and how the section is split

Triple Waterfall

• three waterfall lines are defined
• this is reserved for layouts that need more than two waterfall groups

Top seeds start on

This appears for double-waterfall layouts.

Outside waterfall line

• top seeds go to the outside waterfall
• this matches the NCAA-style default mentioned elsewhere in the product

Inside waterfall line

• top seeds go to the inside waterfall instead

Staggered group ratio

This appears for double-waterfall layouts.

• it decides what share of the section goes onto the secondary waterfall line
• 33% is the default NCAA-style split
• 25%, 40%, and 50% let you make the staggered group smaller or larger

Lane Or Position Order

This control decides where entries are placed inside each heat, section, or flight after grouping is finished.

The same setting can behave a little differently depending on the event type.

Center-Out

For ordinary track lanes:

• best seeds go to the preferred center lanes first
• this is the standard seeded lane pattern most operators expect

For field events:

• positions simply run 1, 2, 3... by seed

Lanes Ascending

• best seed goes to lane or position 1
• next best goes to 2, then 3, and so on
• this ignores the usual center-out preferred lane ladder

Lanes Descending

• best seed goes to the highest lane or position number
• next best goes downward
• useful when a meet wants outside-to-inside numeric assignment

Random

• lane or position numbers are shuffled within each group
• grouping may still be seeded or unseeded depending on the earlier group rule

Team lane seeding

• lanes are assigned from a team-owned lane template instead of normal seed order
• used for duals, tri-meets, quads, and similar team-slot formats
• only applies to lane-start running events
• teammate split is not used with this mode
• the meet must already have team lane slots assigned

Teammate Split

This option tries to keep athletes from the same team apart when possible.

• it runs after initial grouping
• it is a best-effort rule, not a guarantee
• it can help avoid teammates landing in the same heat or section too often
• it is hidden or turned off when team-lane seeding is selected

Advancement Methods

These options decide who qualifies from the prior round into the current round.

For field events, any time-based wording becomes mark-based wording.

Place then time

• first advance the automatic place qualifiers from each source group
• then fill the remaining spots using the next best times or marks
• this is the most common prelim-to-final format

Winner then time

• first advance the winner from each source group
• then fill the remaining spots by time or mark
• useful when the rule is specifically “heat winner plus next fastest”

Place only

• only placing matters inside each source group
• no extra time or mark qualifiers are added

Time only

• qualifiers are chosen strictly by time or mark across the whole pool
• source-group placing does not matter

Custom

• you enter your own place-qualifier and time-or-mark-qualifier counts
• use this when the standard patterns do not match the meet rulebook

Custom Advancement Counts

These appear when Custom advancement is selected.

Custom place advancers / heat or flight

• number of automatic place qualifiers taken from each source group

Custom time or mark advancers

• additional qualifiers taken by the next best overall times or marks

Tie Policy

This control explains what happens at the cutoff when the deciding time, mark, or place comparison is tied.

Advance none

• no tied entries at the cutoff advance through that rule
• use this when the meet wants a strict line with no overflow

Advance all

• every tied entry at the cutoff advances
• use this when the meet wants to honor all equal qualifiers

In Practice

If you want a common prelim setup, a typical combination is:

• Assign groups by: Serpentine / balanced
• Heat order: Slow-to-Fast
• Fill heats: Balanced heats
• Lane order: Center-Out
• Advancement: Place then time

If you want a strong fast section format, a typical combination is:

• Assign groups by: Best together (by seed)
• Heat order: Slow-to-Fast
• Lane or position order: Center-Out or numeric ascending, depending on the event

Inherited Defaults

A round can inherit its effective capacity instead of forcing an explicit override.

When the round-level max-per-heat or flight size is left at inherit:

• 2Timer resolves the effective value from meet defaults
• seeding-profile discipline-group defaults can contribute for distance-style and field events
• the workspace shows whether the current value is coming from a meet default or system fallback

This makes it easier to keep many events aligned without filling every round with hard-coded capacities.

Meet Profile And Round Overrides

Before you seed rounds, the meet itself can point to a Seeding profile.

You usually choose this in one of two places:

• during meet creation
• later in the meet’s Edit Meet settings

That profile becomes the meet’s default seeding source for applicable discipline groups.

In practice, that means:

• new rounds start from the meet’s selected seeding profile
• the workspace loads those defaults automatically when no explicit round strategy has been saved
• a round can still save its own strategy and override the meet-level default

The override rule is simple:

• the meet profile sets the starting behavior
• the saved round strategy wins for that round
• the current unsaved draft wins until you leave or reseed

Use the meet profile when you want consistency across the whole meet.

Use a round override when one event needs special handling, such as:

• a different heat grouping pattern
• a different start type
• team-lane seeding for one relay but not the rest
• custom advancement rules for a specific round

See Seeding Profiles and Defaults for the full profile workflow and built-in profile list.

Preview, Manual Edits, and Reseeding

Seed Round previews the seeding result and fills the placement grid, but it is still just a draft until you save assignments.

After preview, you can:

• accept the draft as-is
• drag or edit placements manually
• clear assignments and reseed
• reseed after changing strategy

Be careful with reseeding after manual edits. Running the seeding algorithm again rebuilds the draft grid from the current rules.

Advancement

Advancement appears for rounds after round 1.

Use it to decide who moves from the previous round into the current round. Common patterns include:

• place only
• time only
• place plus time
• custom counts

Advancement settings are stored with the round seeding config, so the round’s seeding and advancement behavior now live together.

Review advancement only after prior-round results are complete enough to trust.

Team-Lane Seeding

For lane-start running events, the lane-order setting can use team lane seeding instead of ordinary seed-to-lane order.

This workflow depends on:

• a selected team-lane template
• each meet team having a lane slot assignment

Use this when teams need reserved lane blocks in duals, tri-meets, quads, or similar formats.

See Team-Lane Seeding for the full setup.

Finals Scoring Heats

The seeding workspace can show which finals heats are scoring and which are non-scoring, but this is not configured in seeding.

If only some finals heats should count toward T&F team points:

• open the event editor
• go to the round cards on the event form
• use the finals-only scoring-heats control there

If no scoring-heats override is set, all finals heats score by default.

Field Events

Field events use the same queue and workspace, but think in terms of flights and positions rather than lanes.

Review:

• flight count
• positions per flight
• assignment order
• whether the round is using imported seed marks or prior-round data

The placement grid still follows the same preview, edit, and save pattern.

Locking and Availability

2Timer blocks seeding actions when the round cannot safely be changed.

Common lock reasons:

• no entries are available for that round
• the round has already started
• the round is completed
• results have already begun for the round

When a round is locked, use results or entry-management workflows instead of reseeding.

Common Problems

Verification Checklist

• Entries are present before seeding begins.
• The correct round is selected.
• Saved queue filters match the events you intend to work.
• Strategy defaults are saved before bulk seeding.
• Preview placements look correct before assignments are saved.
• Prior-round results are final enough before advancement is applied.
• Team lane slots are assigned before using team-lane seeding.
• Locked rounds are not reseeded after competition starts.

Related Pages

• Track and Field
• Track and Field Setup
• Seeding Profiles and Defaults
• Team-Lane Seeding
• Teams and Leagues
• Athletes and Entries
• Results and Reports

Metadata

• Last Updated: 2026-04-13
• Version: 0.4
• Status: Active