» Note: Seeding & Scoring Rules only affect meets run in Meet Maestro™. If you have questions about missing seed times or how to exclude unofficial seed times, ➞ See Seed Times: FAQs & Configurations.
Covered in this Article:
Access and Preview Settings
Setting Seeding & Scoring Rules
- Seeding & Lane Assignment
- Placing & Scoring
- Official Time Computation
- Individual Events
- Relay Events
Meet Template Settings
Settings for seeding and scoring are tied to a Meet Template in SwimTopia (preferable) or are set directly on each meet and they transfer to Meet Maestro when you merge the meet.
➧ If your league has linked meet templates to your meets OR created shared meet templates for your use...
If your team is part of a league that uses our league schedule import, the league will set the seeding and scoring rules through a shared meet template, and apply these templates to your meets. If each team creates its own meets, then each team manually applies the applicable template.
Either way, you will not be able to make any updates to the seeding and scoring rules unless the "Unlink" button appears. (If you have questions on these settings, contact your league.)
You can view these rules in the league-shared meet template under Schedule > Meet Templates > Select a template > Seeding & Scoring.
You can also see these settings from your meet, under Schedule > Select Meet Name > Meet Setup > Seeding & Scoring.
If you are ready to merge your meet. ➞ See our SwimTopia Meet Entries – Ready to Merge article for details.
➧ If you need to set up the seeding and scoring rules for your team (not part of a league)...
Edit your meet templates under Schedule > Meet Templates with the seeding and scoring rules.
If your meets are already created, you will also need to “Apply” the correct meet template to each meet.
Go to Schedule, and click on the name of a meet. Then go to Meet Setup > Events > Template > Apply Template.
➞ See our Help Center article about creating Meet Templates.
Meet-Specific Settings
Seeding & Scoring rules can also apply when the meet is not configured via a Meet Template.
» Note: The rules set for the meet by the host team are the ones that are used for Meet Maestro.
To edit the scoring and seeding rules in a specific meet, you can find them under Schedule > Select Meet Name > Meet Setup > Seeding & Scoring.
Preview Settings
Raise your hand if you need a visual. We see you!
Seeding and Scoring rules can be complex, but configuring your meets with these rules doesn’t have to be! There’s no need to wait until you’ve merged the meet entries to verify athletes are seeded in lanes as expected, and heats/lanes are designated as scoring or exhibition as required!
To see a visual representation of the seeding and scoring settings, click on the Preview Settings button on the Seeding & Scoring screen of your meet templates or within a specific meet.
Preview various lane assignment, placing, and scoring scenarios based on your Seeding & Scoring rules.
» Note: “EMPTY” will leave the lane empty if your settings require the lane to remain empty, and “AUTO” will add the athlete with the next fastest entry time in the lane.
➧ Make adjustments - choose your adventure!
In the Settings Preview, you can adjust the number of Lanes (1-12), Meet type (dual, 3+), Event type (Individual, Relay), and Heat type (Scoring, Non-scoring). Then click Generate Preview.
The preview will update to display how the athletes will be organized in the pool based on your selected scenario.
➧ Save form to enable preview
As you alter the settings (if they are not locked by your league), the Preview Settings button becomes disabled and the page displays a reminder for you to Save form to enable preview.
After saving your changes, you will see the Preview Settings button enabled, ready to display an updated preview.
➧ Example Scenarios
Here is an example when seeding and lane assignments are set as seen below, with no designated scoring heats or lanes.
Seeding & Lane Assignment
This section controls how meet entries are assigned to heats and lanes during the "seeding" process.
➧ Order heats by time
Controls whether heats are created "slowest to fastest" or "fastest to slowest" order
➧ Seed tied entries (Including NTs)
This configuration focuses on how to seed tied entries (exact time or NTs). NTs are the most common tie and are considered the slowest time when seeding in general, but the point of this setting is to determine how any tie should be seeded. The default is "randomly." This means there is no factor determining the seeding of tied athletes after athletes with times are seeded.
Other options include:
- by athlete age (oldest first) - older* athletes would be considered faster
- by athlete age (youngest first) - younger* athletes would be considered faster
*Age is determined in days not years. If an athlete is one day older, they are considered faster with the first setting, and if an athlete is one day younger, they are considered faster with the second setting.
What if birthdates are not captured? If one of the "by athlete age" options is selected, those athletes with birthdates defined will sort before athletes that do not have birthdates. Athletes without birthdates defined will seed in random order with each other when there are ties. If no athletes have birthdates, these selections will have no effect and all ties will be seeded randomly.
➧ Individual/Relay events: seed entries into lanes
Supports separate lane assignment rules for individual and relay events. Lanes can be assigned to specific teams, otherwise, entries are assigned based on time which minimized heat duration and helps the meet run more efficiently.
Many options are available to automatically assign lanes to teams:
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- Odd/event by team: Assigns home and visitor teams to alternating designated lanes. (Dual meet only)
- Sides by team: Assigns home and visitor teams to sides of the pool, in high or low number lanes. For example home in lanes 1,2,3 and visitor in lanes 4,5,6. (Dual meet only)
- Manually assigned during merge: This option adds a step to the process where lane assignments for each team can be made at the time the meet entries are merged. Works with any number of teams. Below is an example for a tri-meet (this window appears after the "Build Meet in Meet Maestro" button has been clicked, on the Merge/Export screen):
➧ Apply assigned lanes
For assigned lanes, this controls when and how the lane assignments are applied. Options include:
-
- Flexibly: This option will fill lanes with entries from the assigned team, until no more entries for that team are available. If no entries for the assigned team are available, it will fill the lane with the next fastest entry from any team. However, lane assignments are strictly followed in any designated scoring heats.
- Strictly: This option will only fill a lane with an entry from the assigned team. If no team is assigned to the lane or no entries from that team are available, the lane will be left empty.
- In designated scoring heats only: This option will only follow lane assignments in designated scoring heats. All other heats are seeded based on entry time. In meets with designated scoring heats, this option can reduce the overall duration of the meet by optimizing non-scoring heats to group swimmers of similar speed.
» Note: Maestro prevents one swimmer from being in a heat by themselves (assuming there is more than one swimmer in that event) — Maestro will automatically seed each heat to have a minimum of 3 swimmers per heat in a pool with 5 or more lanes (assuming at least 3 swimmers in that event), and a minimum of 2 swimmers in a 4-lane pool (assuming at least 2 swimmers in that event), except when (a) the previous heat was a dedicated scoring heat, or (b) the "Apply assigned lanes" setting is set to "Strictly (don't fill unassigned lanes)".
Placing & Scoring
This section controls how places are awarded and how points are scored. Ribbons are awarded based on place. Points are scored primarily based on place, but in some instances, points may be awarded to different places.
➧ Use designated scoring HEATS
-
- Limit placing and point scoring, or just point scoring to the specified number of fastest heats. Only swimmers seeded into these designated scoring heats will be eligible to be awarded points and overall place ribbons (if placing is also limited). If the "point scoring only" option is selected, swimmers in other heats will be eligible for place ribbons, but not points.
- You can also choose to automatically fill non-scoring lanes in these scoring heats, or leave them empty unless pre-assigned.
➧ Use designated scoring LANES
Limit point scoring and (optionally) placing to the designated number of "inner/fastest" or "first" lanes (see below for more details on the "first" option). Entries in lanes outside the designated scoring lanes will be treated as equivalent to an Exhibition entry, that is ineligible for placing or point scoring (depending on the setting selected).
➞ Limiting placing and point scoring to the "first" N lanes
This option may seem unusual for most, so we wanted to provide a bit more explanation. This is useful if your league/team mandates that the first N lanes are the designated scoring lanes, or if your lanes are numbered out of order.
For Example: The image above would represent your league/team wanting lanes 1-4 as the designated scoring lanes in Heat 1.
- If the coaches don't assign swimmers to those lanes, the system will seed lanes 1-4 as if there were only 4 lanes in the pool: fastest swimmers in the inner 2 lanes (lanes 2,3), next fastest swimmers in lanes 1,4.
- Odd/even lane assignments will be honored strictly in lanes 1-4 in Heat 1. If the other team doesn't have any swimmers in that event, their lanes will remain empty
- All remaining lanes in Heat 1 will be seeded based on your seeding and lane assignment setting.
- All lanes in non-scoring heats will be seeded based on your seeding and lane assignment setting.
If coaches don't make lane assignments, seeding based strictly on time would look like this in an 8-lane pool:
| Lane 1: | Fastest swimmer |
| Lane 2: | 2nd fastest swimmer |
| Lane 3: | 3rd fastest swimmer |
| Lane 4: | 4th fastest swimmer |
| Lane 5: | 5th fastest swimmer |
| Lane 6: | 6th fastest swimmer |
| Lane 7: | 7th fastest swimmer |
| Lane 8: | 8th fastest swimmer |
The odd/even lane assignments will make these seeding assignments look different than the above assignments (and could be slightly different in heats where there are more swimmers from one team in an event). In Heat 1, the lane assignments would be:
| Lane 1: | 2nd fastest visiting swimmer (if none, leave empty) |
| Lane 2: | Fastest home swimmer (if none, leave empty) |
| Lane 3: | Fastest visiting swimmer (if none, leave empty) |
| Lane 4: | 2nd fastest home swimmer (if none, leave empty) |
| Lane 5: | 3rd fastest visiting swimmer (if none, 3rd fastest home swimmer -- which adjusts assignments in subsequent lanes) |
| Lane 6: | 3rd fastest home swimmer (if none, 3rd fastest visiting swimmer -- which adjusts assignments in subsequent lanes) |
| Lane 7: | 4th fastest visiting swimmer (if none, next fastest home swimmer) |
| Lane 8: | 4th fastest home swimmer (if none, next fastest visiting swimmer) |
(non-scoring heats would have the same lane assignments as above, but no lanes will be left empty)
➧ Award places primarily based on time or place judging
This option controls how places are primarily awarded in Meet Maestro. Options are "time" and "place judging." If the "place judging" option is selected, then the heat place is made editable in the Meet Maestro Run Meet interface to make it easier to input judged places. In designated scoring heats, the judged heat place also becomes the overall place.
» Double-Dual Scoring & Tri-Meets: Maestro does not support double-dual scoring currently. You can download the results file from the Finish & Export screen under the Settings (gear icon) within your meet in Meet Maestro if you want to load them into another system to score as needed. For win-loss in a Tri-meet, each team is ranked relative to the other teams based on total points. First place gets 2 wins. 2nd place gets 1 win and 1 loss, 3rd place gets 2 losses.
Official Time Computation
➧ Watch tolerance
Options to use middle time or average all times
➧ Response when out of tolerance range
Based on the timeframe entered, either a warning will display or the time will be discarded.
Individual Events
If your team allocates points for individual events, don't forget to set your points before you merge your meet entries! If you forget, no worries. Until this can be edited directly in Meet Maestro, contact our Customer Happiness Team and we will get this updated for you!
Relay Events
If your team allocates points for relay events, don't forget to set your points before you merge your meet entries! If you forget, no worries. Until this can be edited directly in Meet Maestro, contact our Customer Happiness Team and we will get this updated for you!
➞ Next Topic: SwimTopia - Meet Linking
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