Swim Meet Operations

CUSD Summer League Meets

CUSD Summer League Meets are an opportunity for participants to experience a swim meet environment. We hope that swimmers are able to see improvement through the summer season, but even more importantly that they enjoy the sport of swimming. Swimming is a journey of working on a couple aspects of swimming and then going to a meet to see the progress. This may be in time, but possibly not. The learning that you root for your teammates to improve, and at the same time trying to race and beat them. It brings the best out of you, and the adrenaline from trying to compete is the fun experience we are looking for.

A Swim Meet will be with much of the same technology we use at large meets we run in the area. We will always use the buttons and stopwatches. The buttons would be the primary in this format and the stopwatches would be the backup. Sometimes we would use touchpads. touchpads would be the primary, then the buttons, and last resort would be the stopwatch. The backups are used because some times the technology doesn't work. You can imagine the difficulty we have with electronic connections in a wet environment. It is perfectly safe, but misfires and faults occur. This is why backups are required.

With this format, as an admin we only go by times we get. Place is not dependent upon what a parent saw, what the scoreboard said, or what they have on video. Any argument about this will disqualify a swimmer for Operation Disruption. A scoreboard can be wrong because backups are not indicated on the scoreboard. Times go into the computer and the operator will be notified if there is a discrepency in the times, and then the appropriate correction is made. 

Our Meet Officials are coaches with experience in swimming. They are not trained to do everything a normal official would do. We simplify the process by having them look for only the following disqualifications (DQ's):

Freestyle

• Early Take off
• Pulling on Lane Line
• Touching the Bottom of pool
• Not touching a wall
• Past 15 Meter underwater

Backstroke

• Rolling to stomach (Body position goes past vertical)
• Early Take-off
• Pulling on lane line
• Touching the bottom of the pool
• Not touching a wall
• past 15 meter underwater

Breaststroke (A legal breaststroke in Summer League may not be a legal stroke in normal meets)

• Early Take off
• Pulling on Lane Line
• Touching the Bottom of pool
• Flutter Kick
• Hands goes past hips in the stroke
• More than one stroke without the head rising above surface
• More than one kick in a stroke cycle
• More than one dolphin kick, and/or one arm stroke, and/or one kick underwater off turns (1 pull down)
• wrong stroke

Butterfly  (A legal breaststroke in Summer League may not be a legal stroke in normal meets)

• Early Take off
• Pulling on Lane Line
• Touching the Bottom of pool
• past 15 meter underwater
• Flutter Kick
• Non-simultaneous arm recovery
• wrong stroke
  

What do you do at a swim meet?

1. Check Heat and Lane Assignment(s). (Once Posted)
2. Athlete will go behind the lane they are to swim in advance
3. The short whistles are blown for their heat (At the conclusion of the previous heat), and the athlete steps in front of the timers
4. The Long whistle is blown, and the athlete steps up on the block
5. The starter says "Take your marks" waits for all athletes to come to a stop.
6. The starter says "Go" or the Beep comes from the starting system. (Timers will start stopwatch)
7. The race occurs, and on the final lap the timers stand up, walk to the edge, and prepares to stop the stopwatch and press the buttons.
8. All swimmers finish and the swimmers then can get out of the pool.
9. Swimmer can check their time by looking at sheet that the timer writes down, but it is unofficial.
10. You will repeat this process for each event.
11. Results will get posted once finalized (admin official must compare button times. If there are no indication of the correct time, then the admin refers back to the stopwatch time. (We will not be using touchpads because so many swimmers at the Summer League level tend to not provide enough pressure to activate the pad. The results in more admin reconciliation and it takes longer to get official results.)
    

Notes about swim meets:

We will be trying to post results on SwimCloud.

We try to post on Meet Mobile. Meet Mobile times are unofficial, but most times are accurate.

If a swimmer does not have a stopwatch time or button times then the result of the swim will be a NS.

Most swim meets operate with the help of volunteer parents. We will operate each meet to the best of our abilities, but the quality of the meet is 100% based on parent volunteers.