Meet Day & Heat Sheets

Packing list for the meet:

• Suit

• Cap

• Goggles

• Sharpie for writing on their hand

• One towel per race

• Warm clothes

• Camp chairs and popup (optional)

• Food and / or cash for concessions

After you arrive and set up:

• Swimmers:

  • Go to the clipboards hanging on a fence to find their entries.

  • The entries are often sent via email, but not always.

  • Write the event numbers and stroke on their hands:

  

• Parents:

  • Find the volunteer pop-up and sign in so the volunteer coordinator knows you have arrived.

  • Also write your swimmers' events on your hands to help you catch them!

  • Help your swimmer listen for the PV team meeting (prior to warmups for away meets and after warmups for home meets).

Knowing when it is time to swim:

There is an area called Seeding.  This is where volunteers line up the swimmers according to their race numbers.  There will be a sign with a number of which events they are seeding through.  For example, if it says 10 and your swimmer is in event 9, they need to be at seeding (they won't necessarily go up by 1 at each change so pay close attention).  Parents can help remind their swimmers when it is time to go, but seeding gets crowded if parents hang around so please don’t stay too long.  Btw, if you volunteer in seeding, you'll know when your kid is going through and you will know to watch them swim!

Heat Sheet Info:

A heat sheet is the program for the meet.  It shows every race.  Each event (separated by gender, age, stroke, and distance) can have multiple heats.  This means if there are 12 girls swimming freestyle that are 8 years old, they will swim 6 girls in one heat and 6 in the next.  If a pool has 8 lanes, they can swim 8 at a time.

The heat sheet is put together by the home team.  PV will send it out as soon as it is ready.  Most other host teams will send theirs out but sometimes they might not.

When a swimmer looks at their entries when they arrive at the pool, they will see their event, heat, and lane.  They will also see their seed time if they have one (this best time).  As long as your swimmer knows which event number they are in, they don’t need to worry about all of the other numbers.  Note that the entries have two columns under each name.

Side note - NT stands for No Time.  This means that the swimmer has had no previous legal time for that particular event.  A swimmer may swim breaststroke many times and not get an official time (it’s a celebration when they do!).

Relays are listed at the bottom of the entry sheets.  The order of the swimmers is read left to right and then to the next line, like a book.  They are in a particular order on purpose.  Medley relays are backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle (side note - an IM, individual medley, has a different order).  Help your swimmer figure out who their relay teammates are early on!  Teammates can walk over together, but it would be easiest to find stray teammates at seeding than walking all around the pool.

Because 10 and under swimmers do 25s, two of the relay swimmers need to be at the other end of the pool.  The first and third swimmers are at the block end while the second and four go to the other end.  Coaches will be there to assist with this.

One last thing to share - the events will follow the heat sheet, but you will notice the sharpie where events are combined.  If one event has 2 kids and the next as 3, they can swim together to make the evening go faster.  They will be scored separately.