San Diego - Imperial Swimming

Times

There are many beautiful things about the sport of swimming. One of them is the objective nature of the results. Once you touch the wall, there it is in black and white: the time it took you to cover the distance of the race!

Timing standards allow swimmers to set goals and allow meet administrators to keep the competitiveness within a particular meet closer to have a more efficient swim meet. Meets that have too many swimmers entered means very long meets. Timing standards can be used to limit the size of a meet. USA Swimming has a rule that 12&Under meet sessions are planned for 4 hours or less (championship meets are excluded from this rule). SI works very hard to meet this rule, but there are times when things do not go as planned.

San Diego Imperial Swimming previously used time standards that were set by the LSC to our north, Southern California Swimming. We previously called our timing standards A, B, C, but were totally unrelated to the USA Swimming published timing standards, which were also called A, B, C. This caused a lot of confusion, since SI A and B times were slower than the USA Swimming A and B times.

BB Max meets mean the swimmers had to be slower than the BB timing standard and BB Min meets meant the swimmers had to faster than the BB timing standard. BB Max meets are similar to what our previous C meets were and BB Min meets are similar to what our AB meets were. Similar, but not exactly the same because the BB time standard is faster than our previous B time standard was. Still confused? Your coach can explain it to you.

SI Championship Meets like Junior Olympics have timing standards that are customized. The goal of these timing standards are to have 24 swimmers qualify for each event. That would equate to 3 heats of 8 swimmers in prelims. SI has an existing algorithm to update these time standards, but we are always looking for ways to provide the best experience for our athletes.

2024 Age Group Championship Time Standards as of 012224 (LC standards will be reviewed in the next month)

2023 Age Group Championship Time Standards (formerly called Junior Olympic Time Standards)
(The time standards have been updated as of 6/9/23)
2022 Junior Olympic Swim Time Standards
2020 Junior Olympic Relay Time Standards

Junior Olympics (JO) meet entry time standards are issued in two formats: short course yards and long course meters. This single set of standards is used for both JO meets. Once a swimmer has a JO cut in one course, he or she may use that time to enter any JO meet. Accordingly, time conversions are not required or allowed.