Houseplay
Tutorial

Advance competitors through heats and finals

Create heats and a final, record the heat results and see the finalists advance.

Event pools let you run heats and advance students through rounds to a final. The pool holds everyone nominated for that activity. Each round is one stage of the competition, and each round can contain one or more events. For example, Round 1 might have several heats, Round 2 might have semifinals, and Round 3 might have one final. You add the rounds and events you need; Houseplay places competitors into them.

How nominations advance through rounds Nominated students enter four heats in Round 1, can progress through two semifinals in Round 2, and reach one final in Round 3. POOL ROUND 1 ROUND 2 ROUND 3 Nominated students Heat 1 Heat 2 Heat 3 Heat 4 Semifinal 1 Semifinal 2 Final Complete every event in a round before competitors advance to the next.
A pool can have more rounds than this video's two-heat, one-final example.

A later round starts empty. When every event in the previous round is complete, Houseplay ranks the recorded performances and fills the next round up to its event capacity.

Create the pool, then run the heats

  1. In your carnival’s Event Pools list, select Add Pool. Choose the event type, set Max Competitors per Event to the number who can compete in one heat, and choose the eligible students. Leave Default Division blank so the heats do not award points. Leave the two automatic switches off if you want to add nominations and events yourself. Select Create Pool.
  2. Open the pool’s Nominations page, select Add Student, choose the students taking part, and select Add Students.
  3. Add Round 1, then use Add Event for each heat you need. Houseplay spreads the nominations across those heats according to the pool’s capacity and distribution method.
  4. Add another round and its events for the next stage. For a simple heats-to-final competition, add Round 2 with one event. Set that event’s division so the final awards points.
  5. In Events, enter the recorded results for competitors in each Round 1 heat, then complete those events. See Complete or reopen an event for the completion control.
  6. Once all events in Round 1 are complete, the next round fills from their results. Run and complete those events in the same way, repeating for each later round. After the final is run, enter and complete its results too.

Watch a two-heat example

If a heat result changes

Correcting or reopening a heat can change the entrants in a later round that has not been run. Houseplay keeps the allocation of a student who has already competed in a later event. If you use lanes, assign them once the final’s entrants are settled.