2025 Swim Meet Orientation
The Cedarmill Stringrays compete in the Manuel Division of the Gateway Conference. Other teams in our division: Cool Dell, Lake Chesterfield, Lake of the Woods, Washington, and MAC.
2025 Meet Schedule:
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Parents must commit their swimmers to each meet online via this site.
The registration deadline is the Thursday prior to each meet. If a child has not committed to a meet prior to the deadline he/she will be unable to compete. This ensures that our coaches and parent volunteers have sufficient time to organize the meet entries. It is easiest to go ahead and declare your swimmers as soon as you know whether or not they will be at the meet. Make sure you are also marking down if they CANNOT be at the meet!
If you have questions or problems with Team Unify, please contact John Pearson at [email protected].
Heat Sheets - A heat sheet is a program for the swim meet that shows all of the participating swimmers and which events they will be swimming, as well as their heat number, lane number, age, team and seed time.
Heat sheets will be emailed to parents on the day of the meet. Please print your own copy and bring it with you to the meet.
Event Number – There are 78 events in each meet, which are always swum in the same order: IM, Freestyle, Breaststroke, Freestyle Relay, Backstroke, Butterfly, Medley Relay
Heat Number – This number will tell you which heat your swimmer is scheduled to be in. Each of the 87 events is divided into HEATS, with up to 6 swimmers in each heat. Heats are swum in reverse numerical order, from slowest to fastest. (Eg: If your child is swimming in Heat 5 and there are a total of 6 heats in the event, your child will swim second.) The fastest swimmers are always placed in Heat #1, and this is the only heat that is scored in a meet.
Lane Number - This number will tell you which lane your swimmer is scheduled to be in. The home team swims in the even numbered lanes (2,4,6) and the away team swims in the odd numbered lanes (1,3,5)
Seed Time – This number represents a swimmer’s best time in this event in a previous meet. If the swimmer has no previous time, their seed time will be listed as NT. Occasionally a seed time may be different from a child’s best time at a previous meet. This is due to the difference between 25 meter pools (like Cool Dell) and 25 yard pools (like Washington, MAC and Lake Chesterfield). As a yard pool is slightly shorter than a meter pool, a best time swum in a yard pool will be converted to a slightly longer time if the next meet is in a meter pool. Example: If your child’s time in 25 Free for a yard pool is 23.25 seconds, this will convert to 25.81 seconds in a meter pool.
Swim Meet 101
What To Bring
• Team suit. While the team suit isn’t mandatory, most kids will be wearing the team suit or plain black suits.
• Swim cap
• Goggles – 2 pairs
• Towels – at least 2 as they get wet quickly
• Warm clothes to wear between events
• Water bottle – swimmers should stay hydrated
• Healthy snacks
• Entertainment for swimmers (and young siblings) such as books, card games, coloring books, handheld electronics
• Folding chairs or blanket for swimmer in bullpen and folding chairs for spectators • Copy of heat sheet – printed at home
• Highlighter for marking heat sheet
• Sharpie for marking swimmer
• Team spirit and a relaxed and positive attitude!
Marking Your Swimmer
To help your children keep track of their events, it is helpful to write the information on their arm with a sharpie. To help the bullpen workers keep track of your children, it is helpful to write their last name on their back.
The strokes are abbreviated with the following initials: FR – freestyle, BK – backstroke, BR – breaststroke, FL – butterfly, and IM for Individual Medley.
One way is to draw a small graph on their arm using just the initials for each of the following:
E(event) H(heat) L(lane) D(distance) S(stroke) 6 4 4 50 FR
