New to Meets?

Please plan to have your swimmer arrive approximately 15 minutes prior to the start of warm ups. They will need to stay with the team, if they want to go talk to a parent that is fine but we ask that it’s a quick chat and they come right back. It is hard for us to keep track of all the swimmers and we don’t want anyone to miss an event.

Your swimmer should wear their Team “Meet” suit, cap and goggles. Team suits are required for levels Bronze and above, but are optional for Developmental. If you are interested in ordering a team suit, contact the Equipment Director, Mark Moser at tuelmoser@aol.com and he can help you. If your swimmer does have a team suit, we strongly recommend that the suit only be used for swim meets to make sure that the suit lasts the entire season. Practice suits can be purchased at a discounted price from Elsmore Aquatics.

You should also pack a warm up suit, extra towel and flip flops or some type of deck shoes for the pool deck. We are usually limited with pool deck space so we ask that they leave their bags with their dry clothes etc in the bleachers with parents. Please LABEL EVERYTHING!! After each meet we always find something that has been left behind, or several kids will have the same outfits. It helps us a lot if there is a name or an initial on the tags. Swimmers will need a healthy drink and snack; we suggest fruit or veggie slices, half of a bagel with peanut butter, power bar (any type) and Gatorade/powerade or water. We do not allow junk food on the pool deck. We do not recommend leaving things in locker rooms due to items being stolen in the past. Many kids will bring I-pods on the pool deck to help them get into their zone, that is fine, however NO game boys, etc.

An event is their “race.” There are 4 strokes in competitive swimming: Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke and Butterfly. There is also an IM which stands for Individual Medley. The IM consists of equal lengths of all 4 strokes in the following order: Fly, Back, Breaststroke, Freestyle.

A relay is an event where 4 swimmers each swim an equal distance. When the first swimmer finishes, the next swimmer goes until all 4 have completed their lap(s). There are freestyle relays where all swimmers swim Freestyle, as well as the Medley Relay. In a Medley Relay each swimmer swims a different stroke. The Medley Relay is swum in the following order: Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, Freestyle.

9 YEARS OR OLDER: A maximum of 4 individual events and 1 relay per day.
8 & UNDER: 3 events per day

Coaches will finalize the events a swimmer will compete in.

We have a 25 yard short course pool so at our pool a 50 is two lengths of the pool and a 100 is 4 lengths. In the meet they need to swim this without stopping. The coach will determine who is ready for each event.

The number of heats is determined by the number of swimmers and the number of lanes in a pool. For example if 32 girls in the 9-10 yr old group sign up for 50 free then there would be 4 Heats of 8 swimmers in each heat. The heats are seeded with slowest to fastest. So the last heat in each event has the fastest swimmers for that event. In an 8 lane pool Lane 4 has the fastest swimmer in each heat, then lane 3, lane 5 …going out from there.

So if you look at program and your 9-10yr daughter is in the 50 yd free style
The program would look similar to this:

It’s a swimming thing…that’s all I can say! We write our events on a hand, arm or leg. If you have a program we greatly appreciate you doing this for us as you can imagine there are a lot of swimmers and only a couple coaches. Looking up each swimmer in the program is time consuming and all too often we miss an events. We will try to get your swimmers events and event #s to you prior to the meet so even if you have that much info already written on them it will help us greatly. We recommend using a permanent marker.

You will make a chart that looks similar to the image above.

Sometime we will add the actual event as well so next to the last column we may abbreviate 50 fr for 50 yard freestyle. As coaches we use this as a guide as well as we teach the swimmers to follow along with the meet watch the score board and know where we are at in the meet so they know how much time they have before their next event.

As coaches we try our best to get kids into relays. It will depend on how many swimmers there are for each age group and gender. Sometimes we don’t have enough kids for everyone to be able to be in a relay. Some meets a swimmer may be in a relay one day and not the next. Again we will try to do our best to make sure sometime during the season each swimmer gets an opportunity to participate in a relay.

Weekend meets generally have two sessions a morning and afternoon session. Pay close attention to the meet information it will tell you if you swimmers events are morning or afternoon and what time to arrive for warm-ups. Typically the older swimmers will compete in the afternoon sessions, but again always double check because occasionally the meet start times or sessions will change.

USA Swimming has standards for each stroke, start, and turn. Minnesota swimming is governed by USA Swimming and there are officials at each meet that you will see on the pool deck, wearing white. If a swimmer is disqualified you will see them raise their arm. We as coaches will receive a slip of paper that explains to us what the swimmer did incorrectly. We call these a DQ. As a developmental swimmer you can expect these, they are a part of the learning process. We may or may not discuss these directly with each swimmer. At each meet the results are posted on wall (somewhere) outside the pool. If your swimmer gets a DQ their name will be listed on the bottom of the result sheet with the letters DQ next to it. What this means is that what ever time they swim will not count. If they got their best time ever, it will not count and they will have to swim it again in the next meet. Please do not worry about this at all! These kids are young and most of them are brand new to the sport. We have not had enough practice time yet for them to understand all of this. Tell them what a great job they did!