What Are Meets?

These are competitions where Club swimmers enter individually using their previously achieved personal best time for each stroke and distance they wish to take part in.  The types of open meet vary according to the capability of the swimmers. The ASA have a licensing system of 4 categories which have been designed to broaden the range of competition available to swimmers.  The Kent ASA require swimmers to have achieved a qualifying time at a licensed meet to be eligible for the County Championships which takes part around the month of February each year.

Briefly the four categories are described as follows:

LICENSE LEVEL 1:
These are the highest grade of meet designed for swimmers of national standard and above. Such a meet has to have lower qualifying times (no slower than) but there are no upper qualifying times (no faster than). Times achieved at these galas can be used for qualification to national, regional and county competitions. Only licensed qualifying times are eligible for entry into Level 1 meets.

LICENSE LEVEL 2:
These galas have both lower qualifying times and upper qualifying times although this is usually much faster than a national qualifying time and therefore not normally are restriction to entry. The lower qualifying times however can vary considerably from open to open. Times achieved at these competitions can be used for qualification to national, regional and county competitions.

LICENSE LEVEL 3:
License 3 meets have upper qualifying times but not necessarily a lower qualifying time. The cut-off can be anything up to a National Standard. Times achieved at these opens can be used for qualification to Kent County Championships & London Regional Championships

LICENSE LEVEL 4:
These are intended for club swimmers and those beginning to enter individual open competitions. These meets must have an advertised upper qualifying time, unless the event is a Club’s own internal Championships (e.g. our Club Championships). Electronic timing is not compulsory, although preferred. Times achieved at these meets may be used for entry into meets at levels two and three and into county championships.

Heat Declared Winner (HDW)

This term is used for events where there is no final. It means that awards will be decided after all the heats for an event have been swum. At most open meets (and indeed in our Club Champs) age groups are mixed together in speed order in each event so results will be split into age groupings before any winners are decided. Confusion sometimes arises with heat declared winner events: it is NOT the winner of each HEAT who wins an award but rather the fastest three (or six) swimmers of each AGE GROUP of each EVENT after all the heats have been swum.

Finals

At some large open meets there are finals of each event. These are always split into boys and girls and are usually per age grouping. The swimmers who will take part in a final are decided after all the heats of each event have been swum. They will be the swimmers who have posted the six (eight or ten depending on the number of lanes in the pool) fastest times in each age grouping in each event. These swimmers will be the ones receiving the awards – sometimes awards are presented to all finalists, but it could just be the fastest three in each final. If a swimmers does not make it into a final, he or she will not be receiving an award even if they won their heat.

Long Course and Short Course Galas

There are two modern pool lengths as follows:

• Short Course – this refers to a pool which is 25m in length.
• Long Course – this refers to a pool which is 50m in length.

When host clubs advertise an open meet they will specify whether it will be a “short course” gala or a “long course” gala i.e. swum in a 25m pool or a 50m pool. On the entry forms you will be asked to submit either short or long course times or sometimes they just ask for “all times to be 25m times”. This does not mean that they want the times for just 25m or 50m of each event but rather the times for each whole event when swum in a pool of 25m or 50m in length.

Sometimes host clubs ask for short course times even if the gala is to be swum long course, and they will use the short course times when seeding the heats. On other occasions you will need to convert the short course times to long course times before submitting them on the entry form. Times will need to be converted to 50m times for entry into Regional and National competitions.

To provide assistance when converting times, the Pullbuoy website has a feature for converting times from short course to long course, and vice versa.

External Links

The following links are handy references for completing entry forms to meets:

http://www.swimmingresults.org/individualbest/ - to check a swimmer's best individual licensed times
http://www.swimmingresults.org/individualrankings/ - to check a swimmer's ranking in terms of licensed times in various strokes/distances at national, regional, county and club level
https://www.swimmingresults.org/membershipcheck/ - to check your ASA Membership number here
https://www.swimmingresults.org/licensed_meets/ - to display a full list of available licensed meets

 How to enter a competition ?

All events are set up in Swim Club Manager and emailed to all swimmers

On the invite you will see a list of events that are available to enter. The number of events available to you will depend on your current fastest time recorded with Swim England this means you may see less events listed than those in the programme.

It is always a good idea to familarise youself with the conditions of each open as this information covers things like:

• Age groups
• When the swim time you are entering must have been achived from 
• Qualifying times this could be Upper or Lower times as described above 
• Closing date for entries
• If there is a minimum requrement to enter
• What level the licence has been set at 
• Warm up times 
• Event address

Once you submit your entry unless rejected by the promotor fees will be due for payment 

All accepted entries will then be posted along with the latest information onto the main Saxon Crown website under the relevant catagory

If you dont have any times showing when entereing a competition in Swim Club Manager it will be because you either dont have a registered time with Swim England or it will be because you last swum this a while ago. In this particular case please speak with your swimmers coach to get an estimated time and enter this into swim club manager before you submit your entry as submitting no time (NT) may mean you will not be accepted into the competition by the promotor.

If the system will not allow you to overide the time this will be because the promotor has set up the file to only accept a licensed time listed on Swim England.

I hope all this gives a better insite to competitions and team events, please remember to check the conditions to any open competition as this often will answer any questions you may have.