Harrington Falls Hammerheads

Bullpen Parents

Bullpen Parents are the volunteers who watch over the swimmers during the meet, and line the swimmers up in the correct event, heat, and lane order. Bullpen parents are assigned to each gender within each age group. 

Your responsibility will be to line up the swimmers assigned to swim that race and walk them to the staging area. Please ensure that these swimmers have their caps and goggles on before heading to the swim deck. Some Bullpen parents can also walk them to the staging area (depending on how far away our bullpen is from the pool deck).  Bullpen parent volunteers use a heat sheet to line up the swimmers. It may/may not contain changes that have been made after the heat sheets were printed (there are always last-minute changes to the heat sheets, so patience and communication are key). Please give the most recent updated Heat Sheet to your 2nd half replacement.

Being on time is imperative to this role. If you are working the first half of the meet, please report with your swimmer. The 6&U swimmers are done at the end of the 1st half; however, occasionally, there is a 5/6 year old that participates in events during the 2nd half. If this is the case, we will let the Bullpen Parent know. 

30 or more VOLUNTEERS PER SWIM MEET

Helpful Tips

• Be on time! Check-in with your swimmer if you are a first-half volunteer. 
• Take attendance - ensure all your swimmers are present (if someone is absent, let the coaches or deck manager know before the end of warmups).

• Get to know the swimmers: At the beginning of the shift, familiarize yourself with the swimmers and make sure everyone has their events written on their bodies by Event / Heat / Lane so they know what and when they are swimming. Also, it is helpful before the meet to write the name/age on the swimmers shoulder with a sharpie. Parent volunteers may not know everyone's name so this helps recognize swimmers when trying to line up for races.

• Swimmers should stay under the shaded bullpen tents: We have asked all Bullpen Volunteers to remind their swimmers to be on good behavior and to stay in their respective age group areas and not walking around the meet. By keeping swimmers in their age group areas, it makes finding and organizing the swimmers much easier. We would like every swimmer to make it to the deck in time for their events, however, it is not your responsibility to track down missing swimmers, but please remind them if they need to leave the bullpen area that they let you know where they are going before they leave (i.e. bathroom, parents, concessions). Younger swimmers should be escorted to and from the restrooms and you should ask younger swimmers sometime during your shift if anyone needs to go to the restroom.

• Lane Assignments: Keep in mind that the lane assignments for each team are generally the same but do often change from heat to heat. Swimmers are not assigned to the same lanes for every event or heat. Lane assignments do often change from heat to heat. Why? We may not have any swimmers in a heat and it may be all opposing team swimmers. We could also have a swimmer only in lane 3 for heat 1, and then lane 2, and 4 in subsequent heats. The swimmers are placed in heats and lanes so that the meet is run in the most efficient manner that makes the best use of the pool lanes so always check the heat sheet.

• Heats: Heats are run from slowest (heat 1) to fastest (last heat). If there are 8 swimmers in an event, there would be 2 heats. Not every heat will have every lane filled with swimmers.

• How far in advance do I need to line up swimmers? Please keep an eye on the Event Number that will be posted near the swim deck with the Sign Holder. This will indicate which event you should be lining up. We typically line up about 10 heats in advance. When the second half of the meet starts, the number of heats per event usually gets smaller and the meet progresses much more quickly. You may need to line up swimmers more than 10 heats in advance.

There is much more information about Swim Meets in the "Meets" Tab that the Bullpen Committee will want to reference.