Swim Meets (5): Swim-offs

-

I have previously covered various elements of a Prelims/Finals meet in my earlier posts.  One final term I would like to introduce about a Prelims/Finals meet is the "Swim-off".   A swim-off is required to break a tie for certain swimmers who have finished the Prelims of an event with the same swim time for a certain seeding position.

Using an example of a SCY Prelims/Finals meet where the top 16 qualify for the A/B Finals, a swim-off would be required in the following scenarios:

a) After Prelims, two swimmers finished with the same swim time for the 8th position.  A swim-off is required to seed the faster swimmer as 8th (& hence qualifying for the A-Final) and the other as 9th (to be assigned to the B-Final)

b) After Prelims, two swimmers finished with the same time for the 16th position.  A swim-off is required to seed the faster swimmer as 16th (& hence qualifying for the B-Final) and the other as the first Alternate.

c) After Prelims, two swimmers finished with the same time for the 17th position.  A swim-off is required to seed the faster swimmer as the first alternate and the other as the second alternate.

d) After Prelims, two swimmers finished with the same time for the 18th position.  A swim-off is required to seed the faster swimmer as the second alternate.

When does the actual swim-off race happen?
It is set by the Meet Referee, but the official USA Swimming rule stipulates that a swim-off must be held "not more than 45 minutes after the last heat of any event in which any one of these swimmers is competing in that session" (2020 USA Swimming Rulebook, page 27).  If your swimmer is indeed involved in a swim-off, it is the swimmer's responsibility to become familiar with information pertaining to swim-offs, so make sure he/she is in constant contact with their coaches and/or meet organizers.

What happens when you get disqualified during swim-offs?
Even if a swimmer is disqualified during their swim-off race, the swimmer does NOT get eliminated "from eligibility to compete in the accompanying finals, or as an alternate"  (2020 USA Swimming Rulebook, page 27).
Using the earlier example (a) above (two 8th-place swimmers after Prelims), let's say one swimmer got disqualified (DQ'd) in the swim-off race.  The swimmer who finished the swim-off race legally will be seeded as 8th to qualify for the A-Final and the swimmer who got disqualified will be seeded as 9th to qualify for the B-Final.

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

<Image source: Shutterstock Royalty-free stock photo ID 135929216>

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swim Meets (2): Fly-over starts? Chase starts?

-
Image
Before a swim meet, I would highly recommend that you read the Meet announcement document in advance so you can understand some of the basic logistics of how it will be run.  It's not a bad idea to go through it with your swimmer as well so they too are aware of it, instead of trying to figure it out on the day of the swim meet.  The coaching staff of your swim club may probably send out a memo with some of the key points to note about the meet, but don't always rely on that to be the case.  Assume you will need to figure it out yourself. The first picture below is the Texas A&M Student Recreation Center set-up as a LCM pool.  The one below that is the same venue, but set-up as 2x SCY pools during Short Course season.  Do you see the white strip of barrier in the middle that is separating the pool into 2 separate SCY pools?  That is called a " bulkhead " or sometimes called the "turn-end" and this enables the conversion of a LCM pool into 2x SCY pools. &
Read more

Swim Clubs in the USA

-
Image
One of the main reasons why I chose our current swim club where both of my sons have been swimming for the past 6 years was for the simple reason that it was only 5 minutes away from our home 😄.  At the time, I did not know that it was one of many swim clubs that belonged to USA Swimming. You can find your local USA Swimming Clubs from here: https://www.usaswimming.org/find-a-team Each USA Swimming Club belongs to what is called a " LSC " ( L ocal S wimming C ommittee) & each LSC has a 2-letter acronym.  For example, my boys' swim club belongs to the LSC "Gulf Swimming" (GU).  Within Gulf Swimming, there are approximately 60 swim clubs. A group of "LSC"s in turn belongs to one of four " Zone "s (Western, Central, Eastern, Southern). Each "Zone" covers multiple States within the vicinity. So my local swim club that is part of the Gulf Swimming LSC is actually one of 15 LSCs that belongs to the "Southern Zone" that cove
Read more

Swim Meets (6): Lane assignments

-
Image
In most of the Timed Final Meet s or during the Preliminaries where there are multiple heats for an event, the usual order is fastest to slowest heats (i.e. swimmers in Heat 1 are faster than those in Heat 5).  Each swimmer is seeded according to their previous best time.  If it's an event that the swimmer has never previously acquired a swim time, then the swimmer has a " NT " (No Time) and is usually grouped together in the latter heats with other swimmers who also have a NT. But how do the swimmers get assigned in their lanes for their respective heats? General rule of thumb:  the fastest swimmers are positioned in the middle lanes. Using the information available from 2020 USA Swimming Rulebook   (102.5.3, page 28), I created the below graphical table.  I highlighted two rows in yellow as the 8-lane and 10-lane formats are the most common ones you will encounter (the 8-lane format is most common for the US  SCY ).  <Lane assignments> So for an 8-lane pool: - the
Read more