Guide to Swimming

A warm welcome to swimmers stepping up into the training programme, or joining from outside. This is intended as a rough guide for swimmers and parents who are new to competitive swimming, or who may have a little experience but still be unfamiliar with some of the finer points. 

I was in this boat relatively recently and under all sorts of misconceptions, the biggest of which was that the club pretty well ran itself – in fact we need all the parental effort we can get and if you’d like to get involved, we can find a role for you. We would particularly welcome interest from parents who would like to train as officials. For more details of what you can do, click here.

It's nerve-wracking at first, but you'll soon get the hang of things. And swimmers should always remember there will be plenty of people there for whom it is also a first meet at that level, from your first B-grade meet right up to Nationals. Enjoy it, always do as the coach/team manager asks and support your team-mates.

Entering meets: An entry form for each meet your coach thinks you will be suited to will be placed in your squad folder, usually about a month before an event. With levels of experience and ages differing within each squad, not everyone in a squad will necessarily be offered the same meets. Coaches will also advise on which events they would like you to enter within a meet. The competitions secretary does not decide which squads or swimmers are offered which meets/events and any queries in these areas must be addressed to the coaching team.

Fill the form in and give it to your squad administrator together with the appropriate entry fee - made out to Reading Swimming Club, not the host club - before the specified club closing date, i.e. not the host club's own date as that is the deadline for all forms to reach them.

Our closing date will always be a Thursday evening. It's a big help if you submit forms on arrival for training as the competitions secretary may have to leave before your session ends, and will need to do the large amount of work involved in collating our entries that weekend.

You will need to state on the form your age, gender (don’t laugh – one meet we attend listed a girl called Ashley in boys’ events two years running!) and your best time for each event you are entering. As the competitions secretary may well have to to vouch for times being valid, if you are using one of our own club forms rather than the host club's you must also say at which meet you swam the time, or if it is based on a time trial. Many clubs' own forms also ask for this detail. You should keep a personal; log book - recording the stroke, distance and time, as well as the pool size (25m or Short Course, or 50m/Long Course) and the license level. The club website can often help here - look at the Swimmers' Times and Meet Qualification sections.

Please take great care to supply all the information the form requests, and do so legibly. Ideally, cross any 7s in entry times French-style (7). 

ASA numbers: These are unique numbers assigned to you and used to enter competitions (If you've applied for, but not yet received your number, say so on the form, and include your date of birth as a cross-check). 

Short-course or long-course? The great majority of meets are in short-course (25-metre) pools and entry forms require times swum in such pools, as do many long-course meets (i.e. those swum in 50-metre pools). Some in long-course pools may require long-course times. These are slightly slower than their short-course equivalents, because there are more turns in a short-course race and the turn is the fastest part of the race. (As you do more long-course meets, you will see that you will only rarely match or beat your short-course best in a long-course event.) If you need to convert times, either check the times on our Swimmers' Times webpages which list them, or use one of the converters listed in the useful links section.

Don't worry if you don't yet have a long-course time as conversions are accepted below national level; paradoxically, South East Region Championship events (swum in a long-course pool) require short-course entry times.

The process: For meets within the club, the forms will be passed to the meets organizer. For away meets, the forms will be collated by the competitions secretary, who will send them to the host club before its own closing date together with a cheque for the total amount of the club’s entries. He will often have to copy all the information from all the forms onto a single consolidated sheet or disk and send this in.

If it's a carded meet (which are getting rarer and rarer these days), a set of cards will be returned to you via the same chain – check your squad folder regularly for these. This will usually be about a fortnight before the meet, but cards may arrive only during the week leading up to the event.  Cardless meets are usually just a sheet of paper returned the same way confirming the swims that were accepted.

The competitions secretary will not normally chase up individual queries after submitting the entries, although he will try and iron out any issues arising after the cards/acceptances come back, e.g. mis-spelt names. Parents with particular queries about acceptance or rejection before the cards come back should raise them with the host club as individuals, and then only if absolutely essential. We work on the good-faith presumption that running a meet involves a colossal amount of work and clubs will turn the entries around as quickly as they possibly can. 

For carded meets, you get one card for each swim, usually pink for girls and blue for boys, and you should check that the details are as on the form you submitted. If there is something seriously wrong – your name is badly mis-spelt or they have slashed a minute off your time – contact the competitions secretary. Some meets use yellow cards for the first event of the day - this is to enable the people in the meet office to start work immediately on the first heats.

If you have not been accepted for a particular event the fee will be refunded, but not until their treasurer has had time to pass the refunds back to ours. For a couple of years now, the club has credited refunds for rejections against future entries, rather than making direct refunds. If you have been accepted for a race, but then do not take the swim, the host club will not refund you - even if you are left with too few swims to make it worth the journey. Harsh, but universally applied. Some clubs also retain the entry fee if you entered, but outside their stated times - and you don't get to swim.

On the day: For carded meets, look after your cards carefully – they are the currency of competitive swimming - and on the day of the meet, post them in the cards box before the deadline, which will usually be around the time at which the warm-up starts. Cards are usually posted on a session-by-session basis, or day-by-day for more extended meets. Don’t under any circumstances get someone else to post them if you plan to turn up late, because you might not make it to the pool but still be allocated a lane, which leaves another competitor disadvantaged through having to swim alongside an empty lane. If you lose a card it is usually possible to get one written out on the day if you go straight to the meet office on arrival, but this can’t be guaranteed. 

If it's a cardless meet, you normally have to sign-in before the session. There is a sheet or sheets usually near the swimmers' entry route, and as a swimmer you sign you name next to each event you are intending to swim.  If you just sign one race, you'll be withdrawn from the others.  Some sign-in sheets have a different slot for signing in once for all your swims.

Some meets don't sign-in - they operate a "withdrawal" system - these tend to be less good because you end up with empty lanes which isn't good either for the duration of the meet, or the swimmers, who don't have someone racing in the next lane. Beware - some meets are starting to "fine" people who don't turn up and don't withdraw, so make sure someone knows if you aren't swimming.

The sign-in sheets or cards are processed in the meet office and swimmers are sorted by entry time into heats ("seeded"). The seeding or start-sheets are then passed to the "whips" or competitors’ stewards and when your event draws near – and it’s your responsibility to be aware of when this is – report to the marshalling area and the card, or a lane number card, will be handed back to you. You will be lined up in heat order and when yours falls due, take the card with you to the start and hand it to the timekeeper for your lane, who will ask you to confirm your name. After the swim the timekeepers will record your time on the card and it will be taken back to the meet office for the results to be compiled. If you qualify for a final, the process will be repeated.

Try and resist asking the timekeepers for your time, especially in meets with electronic timing. There are all sorts of things that can mean the official time may differ from the timekeeper's version.

Finals: Many events are swum on a heat-declared winner (HDW) basis. In other words, results for each age group are collated direct from the heat results and no finals are swum. The regime varies from competition to competition, but for obvious reasons of time the longer the distance of the event, the less likely there is to be a final – though changing views about the best mix for younger swimmers may well see finals in 200m events become more common.

Pay attention to announcements of finalists’ names. The club’s expectation is that swimmers making finals will take up the opportunity, but if you qualify and for some reason can’t stay then notify your coach and the meet office immediately so a reserve who has just missed qualifying can take the swim. Likewise, also tell them if you are announced as a reserve but can’t stay and someone else can be moved up the pecking order. There are few things more disheartening than being named as a reserve and the final then going off with an empty lane because someone dropped out but didn’t say they were going to.

Presentations: Well done for getting this far! That Gap top or football replica may be cool, but there are hundreds just like it round town and not many people get the honour of wearing their club tracksuit or shirt on the podium, so do so with pride!

BAGCATS: This is the system of allocating points for swims in younger age groups – for girls up to and including age 13 and boys up to a year older. Essentially, any time in any event in any age group attracts a certain number of points and prizes are awarded at county level and above on this basis as well as for individual events. You do, however, need a computer programme to work it out. The mechanics and raison d'etre needn’t concern us here, but are fully explained at www.britishswimming.org One or two club meets also offer BAGCATS competitions.

The different levels of meet: 

Club championships: The annual championships are held in the Autumn, with the bulk over the last weekend in October. The 400, 800 and 1500m events are swum on a series of Thursday evening Club Nights. Annual sprints (50m strokes and 100m medleys) are held in late July. Fees for all these are rolled into membership subs at the start of the season, but you will still need to fill out a form stating which events your coach wants you to enter. If you join the club from outside or move up from the teaching programme during the season, individual entries can still be made for a modest fee per event.

Other club events: As well as regularly hosting league galas, the club traditionally hosts an open graded meet in October, a high-level open meet at Easter and an invitation graded meet in May. RSC swimmers entering RSC meets other than the club championships do so on the same basis as swimmers from outside, i.e. entry is not pre-paid with your subs and you submit it with your entry. (And, of course, refunds credited from other clubs' meets can be used if you have any on your card.)

There are different levels of meet: First of all, there are licensed, and unlicensed meets. We'll deal with licensed meets in a moment, because you are joining as an experienced swimmer, you will almost certainly start out with graded meets, also known as B-grades. A few offer a simultaneous C-grade category (called B/C meets).

Entries for graded meets will only be accepted from swimmers whose best time is SLOWER THAN a specified time for each swim. So if you pick up a form and the entry time looks daunting, don’t worry – it just means you won’t get in if you are already FASTER THAN the time.

It is always possible, but unlikely, that a particular swim will attract more entries than the organizers can accommodate within the meet programme, in which case the slowest entrants or those entered with no time may be unlucky. Don't be nervous if it's your first B-grade and you get allocated a swim but don't yet have an entry time to swim off - plenty of others will be in the same position and you'll swim in the same heats as them. And who knows, you might well be faster than some who already have times and just not yet have had the chance to prove it. Go for it!

Entrants are quite rightly on their honour not to fake times on entry forms and apart from damaging the club’s reputation, it won’t do you any good – on the day "speeding tickets" rather than medals are awarded for beating the entry time. In some meets this is a straightforward calculation, others allow a slight margin. (Of course, you may enter in good faith and be in such great form you still get a ticket, and there’s no shame in that.)

Licensed meets: This term has now replaced "designated meets". These are the only meets via which you can qualify for national competitions, and from 2003 onwards, for Southern Counties (soon to be replaced by Southeast regionals). For levels 1, 2 and 3 meets, the timing system must be electronic and the organizers have to meet strict criteria in terms of the level of judging, the length of sessions etc. 

The big departure is that while under the designation regime no entry times were specified and only the fastest entrants were accepted (with competition policy maybe guaranteeing places for a certain number in each age group), the principle is now that meets are expected to set entry times just as do, say, regional or county championships and clubs are expected not to submit entries which fall outside these entry times. A refund may not be guaranteed for such entries, as opposed to those which are oversubscribed with entries within the set band. 

As national times are so prized, competition just to get into some long-course licensed meets can be fierce. Some meets offer the full range of events swum at national level, but others where the hosts’ pool time is restricted may not include events above 400 metres. Competition to get into long-course 200 and 400 IMs is often particularly tough. Some licensed meets may in turn accept only entry times which have been swum at other licensed meets. This is because these are all checkable via the ASA database at www.britishswimming.org, which lists all swims at such meets.

Meets will be swum either in single-year age groups or with double years. Being in the younger year of a two-year band makes it harder to get in, but don’t worry – the boot will be on the other foot next year!

The longer you have been swimming, the more of a feel you will get for the likelihood of being accepted for a particular swim. As mentioned above, if an entry is rejected a refund is usually made, but unrealistic entries create unnecessary work both at our end and the host club’s. There is never any point putting in an entry for a licensed meet in an event you haven’t swum in competition before – except for those events where you have just attained a necessary age, e.g. in 2001 100m events in individual strokes could only be swum at counties and above by boys from age 13. These rules are in a state of flux, but if you are in this position, you should seek your squad coach’s advice about doing a time trial beforehand to establish an entry time.

Needless to say, it is particularly important to use genuine times when entering licensed meets as an entry on a false time may deny someone else trying to enter on their genuine time a rightful place in the race. Obviously everyone will have the odd off-day, but eyebrows will quite rightly be raised and the club's reputation may be damaged if you are accepted and then swim a long way outside the time next to your name in the programme. We don't like it when other clubs do it, so we shouldn't do it ourselves.

Time trials: Even if you have been turned down for a swim, you may still be accepted for a time trial on the day, if the meet policy allows it and the draw leaves an empty lane/s in the first heat or heats, subject to paying the entry fee on the day (which is sometimes a little more than the original entry fee, captive market and all that.) Ask your coach's advice. If you happen to make a national time in a time trial at a licensed meet, make sure you collect the card recording it from the meet office after the session and have it signed by the referee - the meet results will be forwarded to the ASA, but time trials fall outside the meet results. If you then apply for the swim at nationals on the basis of the time trial, the ASA will have no record to check the entry against if they were to query it with the club.

County championships:  These are swum over a series of Saturdays in the spring, and are also designated meets. You will need to have achieved a qualifying time for each event you wish to enter – in other words, it’s the opposite principle from that behind graded meets. Qualifying times are published well in advance and will be distributed with entry forms. There may also be "consideration times" for the youngest age groups, which may be accepted if an event and/or the whole programme is under-subscribed. Ages are as of the last day of the series. Click here for the currently published schedule and times - but check the date as to which year it applies to!

South East Regionals: (also known as the Districts or Regionals) The highest level of designated meet. Qualifying times are much more stringent than for Counties. You will need to specify where and when the time was achieved and the organizers may want to verify it. These are swum over a series of weekends in May, June and July. See www.southeastswimming.org for details. Winter championships are also held for older swimmers. Historically these were held at Barnet, but in 2002 the meet was switched to a long-course meet at Crystal Palace and it was again swum there in 2003. Nowadays they are swum at Crawley and Aldershot - because Crystal Palace and Barnet are no longer in the region.

Ages for the summer series are as of the last day of the championships. As of 2003, qualifying times need to be achieved at designated meets. An added complication as of 2003 is that at Southern Counties (and Nationals), no qualifying times are set for the youngest age groups in 100-metre events - you can enter these only if you make the relevant 200-metre entry time. Although the meets are long-course, entries require short-course times.

Nationals:  ASA Nationals (i.e. English championships) were in late July but in 2003 were fairly low-key as they clashed with the world championships. Age-group nationals are held in late July-early August for swimmers aged 11-13 (girls) and 11-14 (boys), ages as of last day of the meet. The national youth championship for girls 14+ and boys 15+ follows on immediately. Entry times for all levels of nationals are very demanding and anyone making even one has done really well. There is a national open short-course championship - in 2003 in mid-August - but no national age-group SC event.

British Championships: In 2008 the British Championships - Held at the end of March - doubled as the Olympic selection. There are only 3 age groups, so these are mainly targetted at serious swimmers - but the club does manage to get some of the top swimmers to it.

Short or long course, again? This has been a major issue for events at national level. There is a world and European structure of events in 25-metre pools, but the main championships are swum in 50-metre pools. If Britain is to compete better at world level, more emphasis needs to be put on long-course from the younger ages up. However, the country has only around 20 LC pools and they are unevenly spread, with the Southeast particularly badly served relative to its population and if Crystal Palace does close, things will get a whole lot worse.

Two sets of national qualifying times (NQTs) are published, (on the ASA website) and those for LC are slightly more generous than those for SC. (This is because the turn is the fastest part of a race, or should be, and there are more turns in a short pool.) Up to and including 2002, you could make the SC time (as long as it was at a designated meet) and it would be converted to an LC equivalent when the programme was drawn up for nationals, though this isn’t an exact science. However, too many swimmers were making the qualifying time both LC and SC but entering on the converted time if that came out faster, getting seeded in faster heats on this basis but then failing to equal their converted time when it came to the swim.

The regime since 2002 is that while two sets of times will still be used, people qualifying for nationals in SC pools have to swim in the slower heats. (This means LC licensed club meets have become even more attractive, and makes it all the more important that entrants to these submit only valid times.) That said, some very savvy coaches and swimmers deliberately swim off short-course entry times at Nationals where this would give a longer rest period if the swimmer had another event soon after.

Age groups: The system where all swimmers born in a particular calendar year swim on the basis of the age they attain during that year has been dropped at county level and above. These days meets are nearly always based on ages on the day or last day of a meet, or the last meet in a particular series, with counties considered as one series and districts another. A few club meets may remain on a year of birth basis, as do the Speedo and Thames Valley leagues.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope it has shed some light into murky areas. We hope you have a long and fulfilling stint in this great sport and if you are reading it as a Reading member, we look forward to your help in making the club even more successful. 

Phil Tanner 
Updated Nov 03

Jonathan Mills
Updated May 07

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