How to Read a Heat Sheet

What is a Heat Sheet? What Does it say?

The Heat Sheet or Meet Program shows participating swimmers and the events they will participate in. The Heat Sheet is organized by each event, the heat numbers in the events, and lane number for each swimmer in that heat. The announcer will say the event and heat number as the meet moves along.

Changes to the Heat Sheet could be made the morning of the meet 

This is based on swimmers who don't arrive on time or do not attend. Events may also be "combined" to speed up the meet. For example, if we have 2 girls swimming Fly in the 11-12 age group and 2 boys -- we may combine them into one heat to save time.

The announcer will say if heats are combined. Please pay attention when it get close to the time your swimmer's event is.

Event Number

There are 87 events in each meet.
Those events are as follows: Medley Relay, Freestyle (25, 50, 100), Individual Medley (IM) (a 25 yard of each of the 4 strokes), Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly and the Freestyle Relay. For each of those races, we swim 12 events -- one for each age group/gender.

Heat Number 

In each of the 87 events, there are HEATS. Each heat has 4-6 swimmers - depending on the size of the pool.

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*. The home team is assigned to 3 lanes and the visiting team is assigned to 3 lanes*. That creates a mix of both teams.
*There are exceptions to these rules.