In the Know-Swim Meets
Welcome to the 2016-2017 swim season. We are a competitive swim team that encourages all of our athletes to swim in meets throughout the year. Our short course season is from September to March and our long course is from April to August. Each group has an individual meet calendar in PDF format posted on the website under the Meets/Event tab->SCY Meet Schedule. The long course meet schedule will show up in January. In addition to the posted PDF you can see all of the meets our team is planning to attend by clicking the Meet/Events tab. The strategy that the coaching staff uses for entering athletes into meets can be found under the Meet/Events->Meet Entry Strategy. Swim meets are a great way to judge an athletes fitness and skill development plus it’s exciting to see athletes race their friends and athletes from other teams. It’s like taking a quiz in school and you get to take the same quiz over and over to see how you’re doing without worrying about the grade you get. Each time an athlete swims a race they get a different experience in the event. We like our athletes to get many opportunities to swim a variety of events as they work on being well rounded swimmers.
There are a lot of events that athletes can swim at meets and you’re only allowed to compete in a certain number of events depending upon what kind of meet it is. We have several different tiers of swimming when it comes competition starting at Challenge and Pentathlon meets, Age Group Invites, Divisional Champ, PNS Champ, Regional, Sectional and National level meets. We have athletes that compete at each one of these levels on our team. Some meets have qualifying standards and some do not. Each meet will have a meet announcement that lists everything you need to know about a particular meet like location, time, date, which teams are assigned, events offered and eligibility criteria for the meet. Coaches will enter their athletes in events that best help them work toward being a well-rounded swimmer. In some instances athletes will have some apprehension to an event that was selected for them. The longer races are particularly the ones that athletes getting stressed out about when they see it on their event lineup. We’ve found that it’s usually a lot scarier sounding on paper than it is to swim the actual event. Coaches know their athletes very well and know what they are capable of doing when it comes to their swimming. Our job is to prepare each athlete for the events they are going to swim. A lot of what occurs in practice is a rehearsal of how they are going to swim a race at a meet except there are a lot less waves and you don’t have to share a lane with someone.
Our 10&U’s have 12 individual events and our 11&O’s have 16 events they can swim in their age groups. But you are limited to 3 or 4 events per day and it takes a minimum of 3 meets for an athlete to swim all of the events offered to them. This is why it’s important to swim all days of a meet so you can get as many opportunities to swim an event several times. We like our athletes to have swum an event 2-3 times within a training cycle that leads up to their championship meet. If you choose to swim only one day of a meet it will take more meets to swim all of the events offered in an athlete’s age group. Some meets require you to meet the qualification standards for the event to be eligible to swim in that meet. We recommend you sign up for every meet you can and the meets we want you to attend are listed on your groups meet schedule. If may be difficult to project which meets your athlete can attend especially if an upcoming meet has qualifying standards associated with it. In some cases you may need to register for one of those qualifying meets but your athlete still has a meet or two they are signed up for but haven’t swam in that meet.
If you are registered for a meet but are not qualified you won’t be entered in the meet. But if you don’t register for a meet and are qualified you will not be entered in the meet. Our meet registration process is pretty straight forward. Most meets have a registration deadline on Sunday night. The website will send you a reminder email one week before the registration deadline. Once the deadline passes our coaches will do their entries for a meet. After the coaches have completed their entries there is an email that is sent out to say that entries have been complete and to review them. Please be sure to double check that your athlete is entered in the meet. An athlete’s event lineup can be seen at the bottom of the Athlete Signup tab by clicking the Edit Commitment button next to the meet. You may need to adjust the days you originally registered for or may need to cancel your entries for that meet. This is also time to contact your coach if your athlete wants to make any adjustments to their entries or registration status. If you find your athlete is not entered in the meet you will need to email your coach let them know you want to swim in the meet. A couple of days later a final entry email will be sent out explaining that no further changes can be made to your entries. At this point we build any the relays we plan to swim at the meet if they are offered. Some meets have relays and some do not. All athletes are eligible to swim relays but we do limit the number of relays our team will swim per age group. Once our relays are built we send our entries off to the host team.
Meets are a great way for your swimmer to bond with other swimmers in their group as well as other swimmers in their age group and team. We are one big sockeye family and it’s great to build camaraderie and team spirit when you have fellow sockeyes cheering for you during a race. Another fun part of attending meets is learning the value of sportsmanship after a race. Congratulate the swimmer that’s next to you in a race. It makes everyone feel better after giving their all in a race. Remember swimming fast is fun.
There may be other questions surrounding swim meets like where to park, sit, what to bring or how a pool is setup. Reach out to your group liaison or other veteran families parents on the team as they may have a great suggestion to offer you. If you have questions regarding a swim meet don’t hesitate to ask your coach.
See you at the next meet.
IST Coaching Staff
