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All swimmers must join USA swimming to participate in the Club as well as in meets.
Different meets we attend require different standards for swimmers to have achieved in order to swim in the meet. The standards required for each meet will be listed on the meet sheet. Currently on the team Website we have links for both the NAG and the state qualifying time standards, so you can check to see what standards you have achieved and the times you need to attend certain meets.
At USA swim meets, swimmers compete against others of the same age, gender and swimming ability. Events are categorized by gender, typically in the following age groups:
· 8 and under
· 9-10
· 11 -12
· 13-14
· 15-16
· 17-18
There are some minor variations in these groups, but usually each age group swimmer will be competing against swimmers no more than two years older than they are. Within each age group, the competition is further narrowed by time standards.
Time Standards Overview
Understanding the times standards in Minnesota Club Swimming is important, especially if you are new to the sport. The time standards are a tool meant to serve a couple of purposes:
· First is to rate and rank times. Achieving times is helpful in encouraging athletes to improve upon their times and achieve higher standards.
· Second, the time standards can be used to designate which athletes may participate within a certain meet.
· Third, time standards enable meet hosts to control the size of meets.
Within USA Swimming (the governing body of club swimming in America) there are National Age Group (NAG) Motivational Times Standards. These times standards are based off of the top sixteen times nationally within each age group and start at “B” standards and go all the way to “AAAA.” They are published every Olympic cycle (every four years) and can be found at the following link: http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/_Rainbow/Documents/615cb613-530e-4dfc-abfc-8e6926773ac5/2012
MotivationalTimes-Top16.pdf. These standards (and Minnesota's standards) are also available by clicking on the menu: Meet Information/Time Standards/Nat-MN Time.
Many states in club swimming use these National Standards as the base for their own time standards. However, states typically devising a system of their own to help control the size of the championship meets (i.e.: State Meet Finals, ABC Finals, etc.). IMinnesota Club Swimming uses a system that includes parts of the NAG standards, and uses a B, BB, A, AA progression.
Applying Times at Meets
Everyone starts with no times. Swimmers must swim at USA Swimming sanctioned Open or Invitational meets in order to earn times. A swimmer with a "B" time in an event will swim against other swimmers with "B" times in the same event, and "A" times against others with "A" times, etc.
In each event the swimmer enters, he/she is given heat and lane assignments based on the fastest time they have previously achieved in that particular event—called the "seed" time for that meet.
· Those with the slowest times or no official times swim in the first heat, while the fastest swimmers swim last; the exception is in the longer distance events (400 meters or 500 yards or longer), where faster swimmers swim in the first heats.
· Within each heat, the fastest swimmers swim in the middle lanes of the pool.
As a swimmer moves from, for example, a "B" time to a "A" time in a particular event, she/he will swim against other "A" swimmers in that event in the future meets but will still be ranked in the meet in which the new time was achieved against other "B" swimmers. (For example, if a swimmer is seeded with a B time and swims a BB time, he/she may take first place among B swimmers, even if his or her time was faster than swimmers seeded with BB times. But in future meets, he or she will compete against BB swimmers). Once a particular time standard has been achieved, the swimmer will remain in that grouping until he/she moves up to the next time standard (or moves into a new age group)
Swimmers need to achieve a Minnesota Champ time to be eligible to swim in the State Meet in that event at the end of the season. While time standards differ for short course (25-yard pools) or long course (50 meter pools), a Champ time achieved in one season can convert to a Champ-level seed time for the next season. In other words, if your swimmer achieves a Champ/AA time in the short course 50 free, he/she is automatically eligible to swim the 50 free at the long course state meet.
Zone times (AAA) make swimmers eligible to swim in the Zone meets at the end of the long and short course seasons. At that point, they would swim for Team Minnesota rather than for their own club.
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