Swim Meet Format

The format of the ASA swim meets has a total of 86 events. There are 64 individual and 22 relay events. During the course of the meet, many of the individual events may have multiple heats.

What's the difference between an EVENT and a HEAT?

Event: An event is the name each of the different races that swimmers are entered in. Events are identified by a number. Generally, even number events are boys events and odd numbers are girls. The event number is followed by the stroke/category and age group.

Heat: Many swimmers are entered into each event. In some cases there may be as many as 20 or more swimmers competing in the same event. In a six-lane pool, there is no way to swim all the entries in any event head-to-head at the same time. To accommodate the large number of swimmers, an event is broken up into heats. The number of heats is determined by the number of swimmers and the number of lanes in the pool. In a six-lane pool, a 30-swimmer event would be divided into five heats – six swimmers in each heat.

In the CSSL each event will have one of six stroke/categories: Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly for the individual events and Freestyle Relay (all legs are the Freestyle stroke), and Medley Relay (one leg of each of the four stroke styles) for the relay events.

What is written on my swimmer's arm and why?

To help our swimmers keep track of what Events/Heats they are swimming during the meet, it is common practice to write this information on the arms of the swimmers. Using a waterproof marker (Sharpie®), the bullpen volunteers will write, in a four column format, headings E(vent), H(eat), L(ane), S(troke). 

You may wish to do this prior to arriving to the meet. Here are the instructions:

Find the swimmer’s name on the heat sheet for each event that they are swimming. 

For example, Paige is swimming in Event 7 in Heat 3. The numbers 1-6 correspond to the assigned lane. Paige is Lane 6. Next to the Event number is the distance and stroke – 25 Yd Freestyle. She is also swimming in Event 37, Heat 2, Lane 4, in 25 Yd Breaststroke. Her last individual event she is competing in Event 57, Heat 1, Lane 4 - Individual Medley (IM).  She is also swimming in two Relays - Event 27, Heat 1, Lane 3, the Medley Relay (MR) where she is swimming the Breastroke, and Event 67, Heat 1, Lane 3, the Freestyle Relay, which she is swimming second.  

The heat sheet information will be on your swimmer’s arm under each column. See the picture above.

Your swimmer’s event information is on the arm can be as many as five lines long.

 

During every meet each swim team can enter up to 2 swimmers per individual event and 1 relay team per relay event for scoring. Only heat one of each event is used in calculating the scoring total for the meet.

SCORING & PLACEMENT

Individual Events: - lanes 1 - 4 are scored -

• 1ST Place - 5 Points
• 2nd Place - 3 Points
• 3rd Place - 2 Points
• 4th Place - 1 Point

Relay Events: - lanes 2 & 3 are scored -

• 1st Place - 7 Points
• 2nd Place - 4 Points

Each team shall provide a minimum of two a place judges for the meet. In our case IHCC provides 4 (2 deep end and 2 shallow end) place judges. These judges will determine the order-of-finish for each heat. One place judge will observe and speak the order of finish to the other place judge who will record the results on the appropriate form. These forms are collected by a meet runner who will turn them in to the scoring table.