How To Read a Heat Sheet
What is a Heat Sheet? What Does it say?
The Heat Sheet is a program that shows all the participating swimmers and what events they will participate in as well as the heat number and lane number. The announcer will say the event and heat number. Please pay attention when it gets close to the time your swimmer's event! Your swimmer will line up in the Bull-Pen area for their race at least 3 to 4 races prior to them actually swimming their race!
Changes to the Heat Sheet can be made as late as the right before the meet starts!
Based on swimmers who don't arrive on time or do not attend. We will also "combine" races to speed up the meet. For example, if we have 3 girls swimming Fly in the 15-17 age group and 3 boys -- we will combine them into one heat to save time.
How do I find my swimmer on the Heat Sheet?
To locate your swimmer in the heat sheet, start by looking for their age group and event. Then find their name. You will get a better understanding of the time frame of the meet by how many heats are in each event.
Event Number: There are 86 events in each meet.
We swim the Individual Medley, Freestyle Relay, Backstroke, Freestyle, Medley Relay, Breaststroke and Butterfly.
Heat Number: In each of the 86 events, there are HEATS. Each heat has 5-8 swimmers - depending on the size of the pool. At Home, each heat has 5 swimmers because we have 5 lanes.
Lane Number: This will tell you which lane your swimmer is scheduled to be in.
Seed Time: Once a swimmer participates legally in an event, they will have a "seed time" in that event for the next meet. Swimmers are placed in heats and relays according to their seed times*.
Seed Time: The swimmer's fastest time prior to this meet.
Finals Time: The time they swam at this meet.
Heat Winner: First child to touch the wall, even if DQ'd later, will be given ribbon. At Home meets, we will reward ribbons 1st -5th place per each HEAT.
In-Season Meets Points and Scoring: During in-season meets, each team may only score three (3) swimmers per individual event and one (1) relay team per relay event. Again, ribbons will be awarded to all swimmers, in each heat no matter if they scored points or not.
