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. Kid Pushers are used for ages 10 and under. They gather the swimmers, by age and gender, and escort them to the Clerk Of Course for lining up for their heats.
NOTE: Changes to the Heat Sheet could be made the day of the meet based on swimmers who don't arrive on time or do not attend. We could 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 may combine them into one
For anyone 11 and up, please pay attention, or have your swimmer pay attention, when it gets close to the time of your swimmer's event. Also -- please be flexible as some kids change their mind the day of the race for what they 'feel' like swimming and our coach works very hard to make sure they only have swimmers in races they feel confident about.
Event Number: Number of events may vary meet to meet depending on the team we are swimming against. We swim the Individual Medley, Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly, and Freestyle Relay.
Heat Number: In each of the events, there are HEATS. Each heat may have 5-8 swimmers - depending on the size of the pool and the amount of swimmers in the age group/gender.
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. It's the swimmer's fastest time prior to this meet (if they have a previous time). Time trials is when we get the “seed time” for the younger swimmers. Older swimmers will use their time from the previous season.
Heat Winner Ribbons: First child to touch the wall. Ribbons are distributed per heat so if an event has multiple heats, each swimmer will get a ribbon relative to the heat, not the overall event.

