Swim Meets (1): Basic info

I have covered some basic things you need to prepare for your first swim meet in my earlier post.   But here are some additional details of a typical swim meet for your reference.

1. Swim meets are usually held from Friday (late) afternoon to Sunday afternoon.  Friday sessions are usually short, as they generally only have a handful of events (around 4 or less events) and they are usually the longer distance events (e.g. 500 Free, 400 IM).  So if you have a young swimmer, you probably would not attend the Friday session.

2. Swim meets are usually divided into a "session" . For example:
a) Friday = Day 1, Session 1 (usually the longer distance events for all age groups)
b) Saturday = Day 2, Session 2 (10 & Under) / Day 2, Session 3 (11 & Over)
c) Sunday = Day 3, Session 4 (10 & Under) / Day 3, Session 5 (11 & Over)

Generally speaking, there is an "AM" morning session and a "PM" afternoon session during the weekends.  The meet announcement document would have more details about how the sessions will be divided.  Each session is about 3-4 hours long.  Warm-ups would generally happen about 60 or 90 minutes before the start of each session and each swim club will be assigned a timeslot for warm-ups.

3. As listed above, swim meets usually have a separate session for different age groups.  Or sometimes they may have it grouped as a boys or girls session (e.g. Session 2 = girls, Session 3 = boys).  Depending on the meet schedule, you may have to be at a swim meet for the whole day if you have two children who are swimming at two different sessions on the day.  When that happens, you may have to adopt a "divide-and-conquer" scheduling plan with your spouse, friend or a fellow swim parent from the same swim club if you cannot be there for the whole day.

<Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, UT Austin>

4. The swim meet may either be one of the following formats:

a) Timed finals meet:  each event will be treated as a final, so your swimmer will race each event just once.
Say your child is competing in the 50 free event in a SCY (Short Course Yards. Not sure what SCY or LCM means? Check my earlier post) pool with 8 lanes and there are 40 swimmers competing in that event. 
Since it is a 8-lane pool, it is likely that the event will have 5 heats (each heat with 8 swimmers). 
Your child will compete in one of those 5 heats and will only swim once for the 50 free event.
The final results will be based on the swim times of all of those 40 swimmers who raced in their respective heats.
Let's say your swimmer was in heat 3 and came first in that heat.  Let's also assume the swimmers in the earlier heats (in heat 1 and 2) were all faster than your swimmer (i.e. 16 swimmers who swam earlier than your child's heat were faster than your swimmer).  Then your swimmer would have finished the event as 17th overall.

b) Prelims/Finals meet: this kind of format is usually for Championship-type meets.  Basically there will be Preliminary heats (usually in the morning) and the top x swimmers will come back later in the afternoon for the Finals.  So if your swimmer makes the cut from the Prelims, he/she will swim again in the Finals.
Probably the most common Prelims/Finals meet format during the SCY season would be having the Top 16 from the Prelims going into the Finals.  The 9th-16th swimmers from the Prelims compete in the "B-Finals" and the 1st-8th swimmers in the "A-Finals".

5. Your swim club will most likely send via email or post the meet announcement document on the club's website.  Please read through that document so you understand the format of the meet, which session your swimmer will be in and what events are being offered on which day.  The same document would mention warm-up times and what time the meet will start.  Do note that if you are in the PM afternoon session for a Timed Finals meet, they may not have an exact time of when it will start, as it would be dependent on when the AM morning session will finish - the meet organizers will only be able to give a more accurate timeline just a few days prior to the meet (once they have compiled how many swimmers have signed up for the sessions).  A more detailed timeline of the meet will be published just a few days prior to the meet.

6. In most cases, I would actually go to our LSC (Local Swimming Committee. Not sure what a LSC is? Refer to my earlier blog) website directly to download the meet timeline &/or meet announcements.  In many cases, the official results of the meet are also posted on the same LSC events page a few days after the meet.  Our swim club is part of the Gulf Swimming LSC, so I would often go to Gulf Swimming's website and click on their Events page to download the information that I need for each swim meet.  If you are not sure which LSC your swim club belongs to, first check your club's website as most clubs will show which LSC they are affiliated to on their homepage.

7. The meet announcement document will also mention the fees to participate in the swim meet.  I have previously come across some new swim parents who had no idea that attending a swim meet is actually an extra cost, so just wanted to make that clear! 😄
Generally there are:
- Individual event entry fee (per event)
- Relay entry fee (per relay event)
- Flat swimmer surcharge fee

Generally you do not need to pay directly to the hosting swim club for such fees.  Once you make the commitment to attend the meet, your swim club will pay the hosting club all of the fees and then will charge the same amount to you later so you can settle your accounts with your swim club.

The amount of fees varies depending on what kind of a swim meet you are attending.  General rule of thumb - the bigger the swim meet, the higher the fees! 😄
In my case, a swim meet held within the LSC charges about $9 per individual events and a $5-8 flat swimmer surcharge fee.  So if your swimmer is doing 8 events across 3 days, it would be around $80.
If you go to a State-level Championship meet, the individual entry fee could be $15 per event.   For Junior National Championships, it would be $20 per individual entry.   In those bigger Championship meets, the parents (or other spectators) will also have to pay a separate entry / spectator fee.

Until next time, keep on cheering for your swimmers! 🏊🏊🏊