Swimming Glossary
Like most sports, swimming uses words and terms that can be hard to define for new swimmers. Swimmers and their families pick up most of this stuff in their first season, but we thought a glossary might be helpful. Even experienced swim families might benefit from a few of these (in no particular order):
Meet: When two or more teams gather to race, it's called a meet. There are several different types of meets.
Dual Meet: A meet with just two teams. These are rare in VT winter swimming. You can also have a tri-meet. Usually if more than three teams attend, they call it something else (It's rare to see a meet called a quad meet).
Invitational Meet: This is a meet where the host team invites other teams. It's usually easy to get invited, but some meets fill up and need to limit the number of teams or swimmers attending.
Specialty Meet: Invitational meets are often also called specialty meets. There are specialty meets with distance events and specialty meets without distance events. They are called specialty meets because the host gets to pick which events they want to run.
Championship Meet: These meets are usually open to a specific region, but some are considered "open". Most of these have specific qualifying times you need to reach if you want to attend. Here is a quick breakdown of the championship meets our swimmers can attend (the qualifying times get harder and harder as you progress):
- New England Swimming Bronze Championship Meet
- New England Swimming Silver Championship Meet
- New England Swimming Gold Championship Meet (used to be called "B-Cut Meet")
- New England Swimming Age Group Championship Meets (there are three meets broken out by age group)
- Eastern Zone Age Group Championship Meet (for swimmers 14 and under)
- Eastern Zone Speedo Sectionals (for swimmers 15-18)
- Eastern Zone Speedo Super Sectionals (for swimmers 15-18)
- USA Swimming Futures Meet
- USA Swimming Jr. Nationals
- US Olympic Trials
Note that there are many other championship meets, but this is the typical progression for age group swimmers in our region.
Event: In a swim meet, an event is a specific race for a specific group of swimmers. Each event specifies the stroke, distance to swim, and the gender and ages of the swimmers for that event. Evets also have event numbers that can change from meet to meet, but are almost always sequential. If you are swimming event 45 and event 41 in now racing, it's probably a good idea to get ready for your race.
Medley: This is when an event contains multiple strokes.
Medley Relay: This is a relay where each swimmer swims a different stroke. For medley relays, the order is: Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, Freestyle.
Individual Medley (I.M.): This is when one swimmer swims four strokes in an event. For individual medleys, the stroke order is: Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Freestyle.
Heat: For each event, only a certain number of swimmers can race at a time depending on the number of lanes in the pool. When an event is broken down into multiple instances, it's called a heat. For example, if you have a 6-lane pool and 15 people sign up for the same event, that event will need to have three heats to accommodate all the swimmers. Heats are usually filled based on the speed of the swimmers. The idea is to put swimmers next to other swimmers with similar times so everyone pushes each other to go faster. In almost all cases, the heats are compared to determine the place of each swimmer. This means you can win your heat, but that doesn't necessarily mean you will win the event.
Scratch: When you decide not to swim an enevt you signed up for, it's considered a scratch. These should always be discussed with a coach. At some meets, you can't continue swimming your other events if you scratch an event.
Seeding: This is the process of taking all the swimmers and the events they chose and placing them into the events and heats for a meet. Think of the seeds as the swimmers and the soil is the list of events. The swimmers are seeded into their events to fill the meet. Meet administrators like to seed their meets during warmups if possible (rather than days before the meet). There are often scratches just before a meet. If you remove the scratches prior to seeding the meet, you are less likely to have a bunch of empty lanes. Most swimmers do better when they have a full heat.
Heat Sheet: These are printed or digital lists that contain each event, the number of heats and the heat and lane assignments for each swimmer. Heat sheets are essential to running a meet because they tell everyone when and where each of their races will happen,
Psych Sheet: These lists usually come out a day or two befor a big meet. They only contain the names and times of each swimmer in each event. They don't contain the heats because heats are only filled when the meet is seeded. Psych sheets give you a sense for how big a meet will be and they show swimmers who signed up for what (so they can get "psyched" for their events).
Session: Large meets may be broken down into multiple sessions, sometimes over multiple days. The sessions are usually broken down by age groups and/or gender.
Splash: This term isn't common, but in the context of a meet, a splash happens each time a race is started. When the race is started and the swimmers dive in, it's a splash. You might hear someone say something like, "what time is the first splash?" or at a very full meet, "This meet has a ton of splashes".
Bullpen: These aren't common in winter swimming, but a bullpen is a staging area to get swimmers lined up for their events. Swim events and heats happen quickly. When the swimmers of one heat finish, the next heat starts within seconds. Having a bullpen helps to keep swimmers lined up so the meet can move quickly. When there isn't a bullpen, swimmers should line up behind the blocks several heats before their own. Coaches will help with this.
Distance Event: Any event over 400 yards or meters is considered a distance event.
USA Swimming: The National governing body of our sport is USA Swimming. They provide the rules and structure we all use to keep our sport fair, safe and organized. USA Swimming is also responnsible for picking our country's olympic swimmers. That's right, your kids are part of the same organization as our olympians.
Eastern Zone Swimming: The nation is broken into four zones of similar population. Our zone is the Eastern Zone.
New England Swimming: Each zone is broken into several Local Swimming Committees (LSCs). New England Swimming is our LSC.
Course: The length of a pool for races or practice.
Short Course Yards (SCY): 25 yards (Our pool and most pools used for youth and college swimming in the USA are SCY).
Short Course Meters (SCM): 25 meters. Very few pools are SCM in the USA. Fun fact, the UVAC pool is 25 yards by 25 meters. If they move the lanes 90 degrees and move the blocks, it becomes a SCM pool.
Long Course Meters (LCM): 50 meters. USA swimming runs a LCM season for youth in the summer. Olympic ebents are all run in LCM.
