Teams and Leagues

Teams are the schools or clubs in a meet, each with a short team code that athletes, relays, imports, and scoring use. Leagues group teams for conference reports and double duals. This page covers team codes, keeping a team from scoring, changing or deleting a team, duplicate teams, and leagues.

Teams: what each team has

Open Teams in the meet navigation. Each team has:

Code: the short, stable identifier used by athletes, relays, imports, and scoring, such as LETO.
Name: the full name shown in reports and results.
Scored?: whether the team counts in team scoring.
Lane Slot: an optional slot for team-lane seeding (track and field).

Keep a team in the meet without scoring (Scored? off)

To keep a school, club, or composite team in the results without it counting in team scores, turn off Scored?: in the Scored? column on Teams, or on the team’s own page. On a phone, the teams list labels such a team Unattached.

A team whose name or code contains “unattached” is created with Scored? off. Its runners keep their own places and times, but in cross country they don’t score or push other teams back.

A team that isn’t scored is different from an athlete with no team code at all: the athlete has no team, and their results count for nobody.

Team codes: one per school

Pick one code per school or club and use it everywhere.
Keep codes short and stable.
Don’t make separate codes for spelling differences.
For relays, use the school’s code and a squad letter, not a new code per squad: LETO with squads A and B, not LETOA and LETOB.

Create teams before or after importing athletes

Create teams before importing athletes when you want team names to show right away, you’re scoring teams, or you’ll import relays that rely on team codes.

If athletes come in first, their imports create the missing teams from the codes. Add or fix the names afterwards so reports show readable names.

Set an athlete’s or relay’s team

The Athletes page, in the list or with Assign Team for selected athletes.
The athlete form.
A relay entry’s Team code on the entry form.

Keep athlete and relay team codes the same when one school has both individual and relay results.

Fix or change a school’s team code

If a school’s code was typed wrong, for example LTO instead of LETO, change it once on the team and every athlete follows; you don’t redo the athletes:

On Teams, open the team.
Change its Code and save.

Everything that names the team moves with it: its athletes, its relay entries, and its league memberships. Nothing is asked, because nothing is lost. You can’t change a code to one another team already has; if that school already exists under the right code, see “The same school appears twice”.

Delete a team

Select the team on Teams and press Delete. If athletes carry the team’s code, you choose what happens to them:

Keep them on this team code: the athletes keep the code. Creating a team with the same code later puts everyone back.
Clear their team: the athletes become unattached. This loses the record of who was on the team and can’t be undone.

Relay entries keep their team code either way, and the dialog says how many there are. The team is removed from every league. While athletes keep a code that matches no team, they score for nobody, and the meet dashboard lists it as a data issue.

The same school appears twice

There is no “merge teams”. When two codes mean one school, such as LETO and LET:

Choose the code to keep.
Move the other code’s athletes to it: on Athletes, filter or select them and use Assign Team.
Change the team code on that school’s relay entries.
Delete the extra team. Nothing is left on it, so there’s nothing to choose.

A team code that matches no team

If an athlete or relay carries a code that matches no team in the meet, usually a typo or an import that didn’t create the team, it scores for nobody. The meet dashboard lists it as a data issue, naming the athletes and relays. Create the team, or fix the code on them.

Team lane slots (team-lane seeding)

On track and field meets, each team can have a Lane Slot: Unassigned, or Slot 1 to Slot 8. The slot maps the team into a team-lane template, such as a dual or tri meet’s lane blocks, and applies to the whole meet. Two teams can’t hold the same slot. At the Basic level, Lane Slot is left off.

See Team-Lane Seeding.

Import teams

Teams arrive from:

any athlete import that includes team codes, such as a spreadsheet, a Hy-Tek meet file, a Lynx roster, or an Athletic.net entry export. These only create missing teams; existing teams stay as they are;
the teams-only imports: Hy-Tek team/athlete list (its teams) and a Lynx roster’s .afl file.

When a teams-only import names a team the meet already has with a different name, you choose for the whole file: keep this meet’s names (recommended), or use the file’s names.

Leagues: conferences and other groupings

On Teams, choose Leagues to group teams into conferences or other groupings for reports. (Leagues isn’t in the sidebar; while you’re on it, Teams stays highlighted.) Leagues are useful when one meet has teams from several conferences, or you want conference results alongside overall results. Leagues don’t replace teams; they group team codes.

Typical scholastic setup:

Create or import the teams.
Check each athlete’s team code.
Create a league for each conference and add its team codes.
Use reports that split by team or league.

Set up double duals (Generate Double-Dual Leagues)

For a double dual or another head-to-head format, 2Timer can create a league for every pairing of scoring teams:

With no leagues yet and 2 to 6 scoring teams, Leagues offers Double Duals beside New League, and Generate double duals on the empty page.
Tools → Generate Double-Dual Leagues is always listed. With too few or too many scoring teams it’s unavailable and says why.

Each way shows the leagues it will create, marking any it will replace, before it does anything. It uses scoring teams only (Scored? on), needs at least 2, and supports up to 6.

Team scoring and team codes

Cross country: team scores depend on each runner’s team code. Missing or mismatched codes are among the most common reasons team scores look wrong. See Cross Country Scoring.
Track and field: individual events score by the athlete’s team code and relays by the relay’s team code. Keep both the same for one school. See Track and Field Team Scoring.
Team-lane seeding: check every team’s Lane Slot before race day; a wrong slot changes which lanes the team gets.