Automated Seeding¶
Seeding is one of the most laborious things that an official or race director has to do. Data collection alone can take a lot of time, and then sorting athletes into heats can be a manual and time consuming task.
For open meetings, it can be difficult to fully prepare in advance, making fast seeding a necessity. OpenTrack's system means this process takes only seconds and is fully automated. For tricky races that require manual tweaking, this is still possible! If you have multiple rounds, check out our round progression guide.
Collecting Seeding Data¶
Navigate to the Start Lists, and choose the event you want to seed.
You will be taken straight to the Seeding page. If you want to review or add seeding data, click on the Competitors Tab.
There are a number of different seeding data which you can use, and a few different means to collect it.
On entry, you can request or require athletes to submit their PB/SB and/or their qualifying performance which generally is their best performance across the last two seasons. The qualifying performance can also be used to set a minimum standard for an event, so that only those who have run a certain time, or jumped/thrown a certain distance can enter.
You can also import PB/SBs from a number of statistical sites, which we can link athletes to, including World Athletics, Tilastopaja, and Power of 10. You can import data for all competitors by going to MANAGE | MANAGE COMPETITORS | COMPETITORS and then click on ACTIONS in the top right hand corner. You can either run PB LOOKUP which will only update the PB on record if the one we find is better or there isn't one on record. You can also run PB LOOKUP (OVERWRITE) which will update every PB of which we can find data regardless if it's better than what was manually added.
You can also run the PB lookup for a specific event, by clicking Look Up PBS in the top right hand corner of the competitors tab. Finally you can always manually edit the seeding data, either in the competitors management screen or in the competitor tab of each event. You can also add PB/SB data in a bulk upload.
The order in which the three data types are used for seeding for are:
- 1 - Qualifying Performance,
- 2 - Season's Best,
- 3 - Personal Best
If you want to seed on a specific factor then you need to remove those before it in the order.
If you edit any data in the competitor tab click Save and then navigate back to Heats/Round 1 Tab to begin seeding.
Track Events¶
The seeding screen displays the seeding configuration at the top, and all information about each heat below.
Configurable Options:
Methods - The options here are hard coded as per World Athletics rules:
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Open Meet Seeding:
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Order
- Best Last - Athletes will be seeded with the fastest athletes put in the final heat and slowest in the first. Within each heat the athletes will be seeded per WA seeding rules.
- Best First - Athletes will be seeded with the fastest athletes put in the first heat, with athletes getting slower as the heats go. Within each heat the athletes will be seeded per WA seeding rules.
-
Lanes - Input the maximum number of athletes/lanes per each heat.
- Round Structure - This will be pulled from the Events grid (Round column). Update the number if you have too many/few athletes for the heats specified.
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-
Championship Heats Seeding:
- Lanes - Input the maximum number of athletes/lanes per each heat.
- Round Structure - This will be pulled from the Events grid (Round column). Update the number if you have too many/few athletes for the heats specified. You can also choose how many subsequent rounds there will be.
- Qualifiers on position (Q) - Decide how many athletes from each heat will automatically progress to the next round.
- Qualifiers on performance (q) - Decide how many fastest losers will progress to the next round.
SEEDING
- SEED HEAT - Clicking the green seed heats button which generate the round 1 start lists, using your predetermined settings.
- PUBLISH - Clicking the red publish button will publish your seed lists, making them available for everyone to view.
Field Events¶
Seeding one or multiple pools in a field event is pretty much the same as in track events, with the only major difference of athletes being allocated an order rather than a lane number.
Navigating to the seeding page, and collecting seeding data is identical to the track, and set out above.
Once you are happy with your seeding data, you can click on the Round 1 / Heats tab, bringing you to the seeding page.
Configurable Options:
Methods - The options here are hard coded as per World Athletics rules:
- Championship Heats
- Following World Athletics rules - the pool order is random.
- Multi-Round Championship Events will have:
- Qualifying performance (Q) - this sets the performance required for automatic qualification to the final.
- Qualifiers on minimum final size (q) - this sets minimum number of competitor who will be in the final.
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Open Meeting Seeding
- Pool Order - you can select how you want the pool to be ordered.
- Max per pool - this sets the maximum athletes in each pool.
- Round Structure - this sets the number of rounds and the number of pools in each round.
Click the SAVE button, if you want to change the settings but you're not ready to seed yet.
SEEDING
- SEED HEAT - Clicking the green seed heats button which generate the round 1 start lists, using your predetermined settings.
- PUBLISH - Clicking the red publish button will publish your seed lists, making them available for everyone to view.
Overriding Seeding¶
If you want to tweak anything or make slight changes then this is possible by clicking on the specific athlete,
Click the single arrows to move athletes up and down lanes/order and the double arrows to move them between heats. Then click SAVE, to commit your changes.