Team-Lane Seeding

Team-lane seeding reserves blocks of lanes for each team in dual meets, tri-meets, quads, and other small scored track meets. This page covers team lane templates, each team’s lane slot, setting up a round, how athletes are placed, and how it works with finals scoring heats.

What team-lane seeding is

Team-lane seeding is a lane-assignment mode for lane-start running rounds.

Instead of assigning every lane only by seed order, 2Timer can reserve specific lane blocks for team slots. The actual team in each slot comes from the meet’s team setup.

Example idea:

Team lane template says slot 1 owns lanes 2, 4, 6, 8.
Team lane template says slot 2 owns lanes 1, 3, 5, 7.
The meet’s Teams page says Team A is slot 1 and Team B is slot 2.
When the round is seeded, Team A athletes are placed into Team A’s reserved lanes and Team B athletes are placed into Team B’s reserved lanes.

Team-lane seeding is usually used in scored team formats, but the template itself does not award points. T&F team scoring still comes from the scoring rules and finals scoring heats.

Team lane templates (dual, tri, quad, 8-way)

Open Settings → Team Lane Templates to see the built-in templates. They are read-only there; a round picks its template in its own seeding rules.

A template defines which lane numbers belong to each team slot inside one heat. 2Timer includes templates for common meet shapes:

Template family	Typical use	What it means
Dual	Two-team formats	Two team slots split the lane blocks
Tri	Three-team formats	Three team slots receive lane groups
Quad	Four-team formats	Four team slots receive lane pairs
8-way	Up to eight teams	Each slot can own an individual lane

Some template families include rotated variants such as Dual A / Dual B, Tri A / Tri B / Tri C, and Quad A through Quad D. Use rotated variants when you want lane ownership to vary across events so the same team does not always receive the same preferred lanes.

Templates are global definitions. Choosing or viewing a template in Settings does not change a meet until a round uses team-lane seeding and the meet teams have lane slots assigned.

Give each team its lane slot

On the meet’s Teams page, set each team’s Lane Slot, in the list or on the team’s page:

Unassigned means the team has no reserved lanes.
Slot 1 to Slot 8 puts the team in that slot of whichever template a round uses.
Lane slots apply to the whole meet.
Two teams can’t hold the same slot: a slot already taken isn’t offered.

For example, if Team A has Slot 1 and the template gives slot 1 lanes 2, 4, 6, 8, Team A gets those lanes in rounds that use that template.

A lane slot is separate from whether the team scores: that’s the team’s Scored? toggle. At the Basic level, Lane Slot isn’t shown, and teams keep their slots.

Set up a round with team-lane seeding

Open Seeding, open the event, and expand Seeding rules (Standard level).
Set Lane assignment to Team lane seeding.
Choose the Team lane template. It’s required.
Press Seed Round to preview.
Check the preview summary: Mapped teams, Reserved placements, Backfill placements, and Unused reserved lanes.
Press Save and Next or Save and Done.

Team-lane seeding is only for lane-start running rounds. It is not used for field events, waterfall starts, or alley starts.

How athletes are placed with team-lane seeding

With team-lane seeding, 2Timer:

ranks athletes by the round’s seed;
puts athletes from teams with a lane slot into their team’s reserved lanes;
creates enough heats for the teams’ athletes;
fills any lane still open in a heat, including a team’s reserved lane when that team ran out of athletes, with the remaining athletes (Backfill placements).

Team-lane seeding is intentionally incompatible with teammate split. If team-lane seeding is selected, teammate split is hidden or turned off because the reserved team lanes are the stronger rule.

Finals scoring heats and team lanes

T&F team points come from finals results. If a finals round has multiple heats or sections, 2Timer can restrict team scoring to selected finals heats.

Set it on the event, not in the seeding workspace:

Open the event from Events.
On the final’s Round Setup card, with Heats at 2 or more, tick Only some finals heats score.
Tick the finals heats that award team points.

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