Roles and responsibilities

A meet runs on several devices at once, and each one does a different job. When a device joins, it picks a role. That choice decides which screen it gets, what it is allowed to do, and which part of a finished result it is responsible for.

Roles belong to devices, not people. Nobody has an account type or a permanent title. A volunteer who leaves in the middle of the meet hands their phone or their position to someone else, and a device timing lane 4 early on can be the camera later in the day.

The roles at a glance

You will not use all five at every meet. Which ones you fill depends on how many people showed up and how the times need to hold up, which is what three ways to run a meet walks through.

Sub-roles

Three of those roles cover two distinct jobs, and the app lets you split them. These are sub-roles: not something you join as, but a choice made on the screen once the device is already in the meet.

The pattern is the same in all three: one job stays with the timing, and the other handles identity or preparation. One person can hold both sub-roles and flip between them at a small meet. At a busy one, two devices each take a sub-role and neither waits on the other.

Coordinator

The coordinator is whoever created the meet. It is not a choice made in a list; the device that opens the meet holds it.

It is also the one role whose work mostly happens before anybody arrives at the track. The other roles exist only while a meet is live. The coordinator's job is largely preparation: by the time the first heat goes out, most of it is already done, and what remains during the meet is amendments.

Before the meet

This is where the bulk of the work sits, and none of it has to happen on meet day.

1. Set up the meet. Events, genders, age groups, and your lane count. This carries over from meet to meet, so it is mostly a first-season task rather than a per-meet one.
2. Build the roster. Athletes and their bib numbers. A time is far easier to record when the bib already means something.
3. Schedule the meet. A meet can be planned days ahead. Followers see it listed as upcoming with its date, before there is anything to time.
4. Optionally, prepare a heat sheet. See below.

The heat sheet is optional

You do not need a heat sheet to run a meet. The starting line can build every heat by hand as the meet goes, and for a small dual meet or an informal league that is a perfectly normal way to work.

What a sheet changes is who does the typing and when. With one in place, staging loads each heat with a single tap instead of re-entering the event, gender, age group, and every bib at the chute. It turns that work from typing into confirming, and it moves it off meet day.

Two ways to get one, both in Meet Setup → Heat Sheet:

• Import it from your meet-management software, if your meet is already seeded there.
• Build it by hand, one heat at a time. You can also plan only part of the meet and leave the rest to be built at the line.

See set up a heat sheet for how to do either.

Once the meet is live

The preparatory work is finished, and the coordinator's remaining jobs are smaller:

• Open the meet and hand out the join code, which is how every other device gets in.
• Amend the plan as reality arrives. Nothing prepared in advance is binding. A scratch, a late entry, a visiting club nobody expected, or a heat that has to be added can all be handled during the meet. The sheet is a head start, not a commitment.
• Keep the results if no separate record keeper has joined. This is the normal arrangement at a small meet.
• Build and send heats if there is no device at the start. This works, but it puts the heats on the same person who is running the meet, which is why a start-line device buys back so much time.

This is the only role that needs a subscription. Everyone else joins with a join code, as themselves, with no sign-up, on whatever phone is in their pocket.

Starting Line

Everyone at the start joins in the Starting Line role, then picks a sub-role on the start-line screen. The two are deliberately kept apart, because building a heat and firing one are different jobs with different rhythms: staging works ahead of the track, and the starter works on it.

Staging (sub-role of Starting Line)

Builds the heats and sends them out. It never fires the gun.

• Sets the event, gender, and age group, either from the heat sheet with one tap or by hand.
• Fills the lanes: assigns bibs, holds a lane for a visiting club, or leaves it open.
• Sends the heat out, so the finish crew and the record keeper can see it before the race.
• Works several heats ahead, so the next race is already built when the track clears.

This is the sub-role that keeps a meet on schedule. See stage heats ahead of the race.

Starter (sub-role of Starting Line)

Brings a staged heat to the line and fires it. It never edits rosters.

• Arms the next heat, which puts it on the line waiting for the gun.
• Fires it, either by tapping or by letting the device hear the gun itself.
• Holds only one armed heat at a time, which is how the app knows which heat a gunshot belongs to.

If the acoustic start is on, this is also the device that listens for the gun and marks the shot itself, which removes the delay between the gun firing and a person reacting to it. See the starter.

Finish Line

One device per lane, standing at the line. When it joins it picks Finish Line and says which lane it is on, and that is what sends the right athlete to its screen.

In a lane heat the job is one tap: capture the moment your runner crosses, confirm the bib, record the place the judge called, and send it. See the finish timer.

Flag Times and Bib Recording (sub-roles of Finish Line, pack heats only)

A pack heat has no lanes, so the Finish Line role splits into two sub-roles picked on the pack finish screen:

• Flag Times taps each runner as they cross. It records order and times and never touches a bib. Keeping it to one thing is what lets a single person keep up with a fast pack. The toolbar shows this device as Pack Timer.
• Bib Recording attaches bibs to those crossings afterward. The toolbar shows it as Pack Rec.

Bib Recording is the same chute position as the photo-finish Bib Collector, doing the same work for a different capture method: standing where the runners stop, and putting a name to each time. See run a pack heat and collecting bibs in lane heats vs. pack heats.

Photo Finish

One device, mounted and aimed at the finish line, replacing every lane timer at once. It splits into two sub-roles, and unlike the start line these two really are better on separate devices: one is bolted in place and the other has to walk.

Capture (sub-role of Photo Finish)

The mounted camera. It photographs the line continuously, and afterward the operator reads the strip and places a mark on each crossing. Bibs are filled in automatically from the lane assignments, so this operator never types a bib number at all.

There is deliberately only one capture station in a meet. One device is aimed at the line and is the timing source for every lane, so there is never a question about where a time came from. See how the photo finish camera works.

Bib Collector (sub-role of Photo Finish)

This is the position at the finish chute. The camera is fixed on the line and cannot see a bib clearly enough to be sure who it caught, so a second person stands in the chute where the runners come to a stop and sorts out who was who.

Results land on this device as the capture operator publishes them, already carrying the bibs from the lane assignments. The collector's job is the exceptions:

• Fix a bib that is wrong or missing on any lane the roster could not identify.
• Photograph the finishers with the Scan Bibs grid, one slot per place. The number is read off each photo automatically, and the photo stays attached to the result. See capture bibs with the camera.
• Catch the athlete nobody expected: a runner in the wrong lane, a swapped bib, or someone who never pinned one on at all.

This is the second-most valuable device in an accuracy-first crew, and the reason that shape still needs two people rather than one. The camera gets you the time; the chute gets you the name.

How the finish crew changes between heat styles

Most meets run both styles: lane heats for the sprints and hurdles, pack heats for the distance events and anything with a field too big for lanes. The finish crew is a different size in each, and the change happens on its own when the heat goes out.

In a lane heat every finish device is working at once, one per lane. In a pack heat there are no lanes, so there is nothing to divide among six people. Two positions cover the whole field: one flagging times, one collecting bibs in the chute.

Nobody has to change roles for this. When a pack heat is sent out, every Finish Line device swaps its lane screen for the pack screen by itself, and the sub-role selector appears. Two operators pick Flag Times and Bib Recording. The rest simply have nothing to pick.

So the practical consequence is a real one: during a pack heat, most of your lane crew is free. The distance events are usually the longest races on the schedule and the ones where volunteers most want a few minutes, and they are also exactly the events that need the fewest people. Let them step away for the 1600 and come back for the next set of sprints.

Two things to hold onto when they do:

• They have to actually come back. A lane heat needs its lanes covered, and an unmanned lane should look unmanned. A device rejoining a heat that is already running has to tap Ready to take its lane rather than quietly appearing covered.
• A photo-finish crew does not change size at all. The camera reads the whole line in either style, publishing lane results or pack crossings to match the heat. Capture plus a bib collector is two people for the sprints and the same two for the 3200, which is a large part of why an accuracy-first crew is the easier one to staff across a mixed schedule.

Record Keeper

The record keeper watches results land for the whole meet and is the only role that can settle them.

What it does:

• Fixes a bib that is wrong or missing, including attaching an athlete to a time that finished with no name on it.
• Changes a place, either one lane at a time or by re-ranking a whole heat by its times.
• Reviews a photo-finish strip and republishes the times from its own device.
• Finalizes a heat. No other role can.

That last point is the one that matters most for how a meet flows, so it gets its own section.

Only the record keeper finalizes

When the starting line advances past a heat, that heat leaves the start-line screen and keeps collecting results everywhere else. Advancing clears the chute. It does not close the heat.

The heat stays open until the record keeper finalizes it. This is what keeps the start line from ever being stuck holding a heat open because one finish timer has not reported yet, and it is why the chute can stay several heats ahead of the track.

If no separate record keeper has joined, the coordinator is holding this job.

Rules that apply to every role

Readiness tells the crew something, it never blocks anything. Tapping Ready says your position is covered. A heat can still be armed and fired whether or not you tapped it, so if the gun goes while you are not ready, just capture.

The app never has to approve something before it happens on the track. If the starter raises the gun, the race goes, whatever any screen says. Every part of the timing system is built to catch up to what really happened.

Capture first, sort it out second. Every role is built so that an unknown bib, a missing place, or a runner nobody recognizes is a normal thing to record rather than a reason to stop. A time you never captured cannot be recovered. Everything else can be fixed afterward from the record keeper's device.

Every device keeps its own times. A time is saved to the device that captured it before anything is sent over the network, so a dropped signal costs you live updates rather than results.

Changing roles and sub-roles

A role is picked when the device joins, and it is not locked in for the season. A volunteer who has to leave can hand off their position, and a device can take a different role between heats.

A sub-role is lighter than that. It is a selector on a screen the device is already looking at, so switching between Staging and Starter, or between Capture and Bib Collector, takes one tap and does not involve rejoining anything. That is what makes it practical for one person to cover both jobs at a small meet.

The one thing to be careful about is leaving a position uncovered rather than changing it. An unmanned lane should look unmanned, which is why a device joining a heat that is already running has to tap Ready to take the lane rather than silently appearing covered.

Working with fewer people than positions

Real meets are short-staffed. The order to give things up in:

1. The separate record keeper. The coordinator keeps the record instead.
2. The sub-role split at the start. One person flips between Staging and Starter on one device.
3. The per-lane finish crew. Switch to photo finish plus a bib collector, which trades six or eight volunteers for two and improves accuracy at the same time.
4. Lanes themselves. Run pack heats where the event allows it: one person tapping crossings, one collecting bibs afterward.

Notice that the bib collector survives every one of those cuts. It is the last position to give up, not the first, because a time with no name on it is the one gap the record keeper cannot close alone.

The one job you cannot combine away is capturing the finish. Everything else has slack. See how many devices do I need.