What is SCY? LCM?

I work in the IT industry and there are no shortage of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) in our industry. 😄  Swimming also has their fair share of TLAs and if you do become a swimming official (I'll cover that topic later on), you will encounter even more abbreviations.

Coming from Australia where we use the metric system (like so many other parts of the world), all of the measurements used in the USA were so foreign to me.  Even after 6 years living in the US, my phone's weather app still displays the weather in Celsius 😊
So when my son participated in his first ever swim meet back in mid-2014, seeing events such as 50 "yards" freestyle was so foreign to me.  

As a swim parent, you should be familiar with the below acronyms:

1. SCY (Short Course Yards)

2. LCM (Long Course Meters)

3. SCM (Short Course Meters)

You can think of USA Swimming having 2 distinct seasons in a year:

a) Short Course season: generally this is from September to March of the following year.
The swimmers train & compete in a 25-Yard pool.
In the US, most common competition pools are 25-yard pools.

b) Long Course season: this follows directly after the short course season and is generally from April to August.
Swimmers compete in a 50-Meter pool.

Let's say your swimmer swam the 50 freestyle event during the Short Course season .
That would be 50 "yards" freestyle and the swimmer would have done 2 laps in a 25-yard SCY pool.
Let's say the swimmer completed the 50 free with a time of 35 seconds.
So 35 seconds would be the swimmer's "SCY" time for the 50 free. 
Sometimes such times are denoted as "50 free = 00:35 Y" to denote that it is a SCY time.

If your swimmer competed in the 50 freestyle event during the Long Course season, it is usually denoted as 50M free or 50 free LCM to denote that this was actually swum in a LCM pool (i.e. 50-meter pool).
Whilst the 50 free in SCY is 2 laps in a 25-yard pool, the 50M free in LCM is a single-lap and is a slightly longer distance (approx 54.7 yards).
It is common to denote times for an LCM event with a "L" at the end (e.g. 50 free = 00:35 L).

In my 6 years in the US and having been to many different competition pools in Texas, I have never come across a SCM (Short Course Meters) pool as yet.
But in countries like Australia, their "Short Course" season is actually swum in a SCM pool.

One thing to note about most LCM pools in the US:  the FINA* standard for LCM width is 25-Meters.  But since most US pools are 25 yards (22.86M) in width, even though the length of US LCM pools are 50-meters, most of them do NOT meet FINA standards to hold international events such as the World Championships or the Olympics.

You can see from the above diagram that a LCM pool is big enough to fit 2x SCY pools.
So it is very common for a facility that does have a LCM pool to usually set-up their lanes as if they had 2x SCY pools side-by-side, so you could operate 20+ lanes and fit more swimmers.
Obviously, during Long Course season the pool will be set-up in the LCM format so the swimmers can have the proper distance training, but it does mean you have limited lane space as you could only have 8-10 lanes in a LCM pool.

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

* FINA : it is the International Swimming Federation recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to administer international competition in water sports, including swimming.