How Meets Run

Assume your daughter is in every dual meet unless I tell you otherwise ahead of time. For home meets, swimmers are to be there early to set up the pool and warm up. For away meets, we will order Jimmy Johns for the road and take a bus. Details about away meets, including bus departure times, will be sent in a separate email later.

Divers, if we have a home meet at the Mayo Pool, you’ll be diving at John Marshall High School.  If we have a meet at John Marshall, or an away meet, you’ll be competing as part of the meet. Brett will give you more details about that.

1. Meets are generally 1.5-2 hours long.  Everyone is to be on deck cheering, or competing, the entire time.  Mayo suits, caps and apparel are required.  

2. There are 12 events in a meet:

200 medley relay

200 freestyle

200 IM

50 freestyle

1 meter diving - if not at Mayo

(second warm up)

100 butterfly

100 freestyle

500 freestyle

200 free relay

100 backstroke

100 breaststroke

400 free relay

For each event, there is a junior varsity heat, and a varsity heat. Each keep their own scores. I can put three swimmers, or relays, in each heat. I can also have exhibition, non-scoring, swimmers in a separate heat.  I will often do that for our new swimmers for the 50 and 100 free only, but occasionally I’ll also have exhibition heats for other events.  The opposing team will also have this option.

3.  Scott and I will make the line-up for every meet. Often you will not see that lineup until the day of the meet. Occasionally we will ask you what you want to swim, or ask you to swim an event so we can get a time for you. If you would like to swim an event, please let us know.  During the regular season, we will put swimmers wherever we see fit; we consider a lot of factors, including giving swimmers enough events, putting them in events where we need to get times, or having a swimmer try a new event out.  That means some swimmers will swim junior varsity and varsity heats.   It’s no big deal.  We preach team unity every day in this program, and swimming an event where we want you to swim is part of doing what’s best for the team.  At your end of season meet, you can choose your events, and again, we may ask for your input along the way before that.  And of course, we will put you in events in which you are successful as often as possible.

Each swimmer can swim four events in a meet; 2 individual and 2 relays or 1 individual and 3 relays.  With 60+ swimmers on the team, a swimmer does all four events rarely, or I wouldn’t be able to fit everyone in. 

4. We will be swimming in 4 invites this year. These are often for varsity swimmers; however, we want to give mid-level swimmers some invite experience.  So, there will be an invite or two where will take a majority of those swimmers, and give them the opportunity to race in a high intensity, championship meet format. More details about that to come. Divers, Brett will work out on invite schedule for you.

5. Parents are asked to donate snacks and drinks for the team after each meet.  A sign-up sheet for that will be forthcoming. 

6. There are three major end of season meets.

The JV Big 9 meet is for all swimmers and divers not competing at the Big 9 Conference meet. Swimmers choose 2 events to swim, and will have two relays. This is the last meet for junior varsity swimmers.  After this meet, JV swimmers no longer have to come to practice.  

The Big 9 conference meet is the meet we compete against all Big 9 conference teams . We can swim 4 girls in every event and take 4 divers. This team has usually had about 18-20 swimmers. We take the top 4 fastest swimmers in every event.  This is a team event, meaning we wear our team suits, and you’ll swim events that contribute to the team score. 

The Section 1AA meet is our state qualifier meet.   Prelims are Wednesday and Finals are Friday. Diving will be on Thursday.  For this meet we generally take the same swimmers and divers we take to the conference meet. We will put you in your most successful events, and the ones that will hopefully qualify you for the state meet.  To qualify for the state meet, you need to get either first or second place in an event, or achieve the qualifying time at Section Finals. It is a pretty intense meet.  Swimmers, you’ll wear your tech suit if you have one to either Prelims and Finals or just Finals; we’ll decide as we go.

High School State Meet is the following week.  Details about that as we get closer.