Swim Meets

It's been a while since I was involved with competitive swimming, and like everything else, the systems have been fine tuned and enhanced with information technology. It's really impressive what a group of mostly volunteers can pull off. Case in point:

The "Muppet Meet" last Sat. This was a regional meet for 8 and under kids:

• 15 teams
• 281 swimmers
• 890 individual entries
• Grouped by age [4-6, 7, 8] and gender [boys & girls] for a total of 28 events each with 4-6 heats of up to 8 swimmers per heat. 
• Approximately 150 heats
• Venue: Amphi High School Pool, Tucson

The heats are wham-bam, about 10 seconds apart. The meet is pre-organized using recorded best time for each swimmer, with heats from 1 (slowest) to 5 or 6 (fastest). The volunteers have to get their swimmers in the right heat and lane and ready to get on the blocks. It's controlled chaos, but nobody missed a designated slot! The attached link shows a few shots of the pool. It's a really nice facility at a local high school - full Olympic pool with timeing sensor boards, so the humans operating the two stop watches per lane are the backup.  

https://goo.gl/photos/FFyTD3fwWT2P5ZVc6

Note the two shots of a matrix of 8yo girls sitting on a grid. The grid organizes an entire event by heat and lane, a big help in getting the kids to the right block at the right time. Mikaela is in these grids peeking at the camera. Two sets of volunteers work the grid. one set is in charge of seating the kids at the correct matrix coordinate, another group moves them out by heat to the starting blocks. There are separate grids for boys and girls, so that one grid is being sent to the blocks while the other is being filled. The team coaches make sure their swimmers are at the grid in a timely manner.

Event results are ready to print and post within a few seconds after the last heat of the event.

BTW: I'm "awash" in swimming: 8 practices and 4 meets in 10 days. Plus I did some recreational swimming today after practice.

Go Marlins!