Open Meets
What are Open Meets?
These are galas designed for the individual swimmer, although they will still swim under their club’s name. There is a fee payable (by the swimmer) for each event entered – around £5 to £8 per event.
Open meets have four tiers of structured competition and are licensed according to the purpose of their competition as Level 1, 2, 3 and 4.
- Level 1 is aimed at National qualifiers, or swimmers close to National qualification, looking for opportunities to achieve National qualifying times.
- Level 2 is aimed at Midland District qualifiers.
- Level 3 is for Club swimmers who are looking for County qualifying times.
- Level 4 is for Club swimmers who are just beginning competition.
Each level has ‘qualifying times’ – which may include an upper limit (a swimmer cannot have produced a time faster than this) and/or a lower limit (a swimmer’s qualifying time cannot be slower than this)
Swimmers are ‘seeded’ according to their entry times – which means they will swim against others of the same ability regardless of age.
Results are determined either by finals (in age groups) or by the fastest swims in the heats (called heat declared).
There are usually trophies and/or medals for the top three or six in each age group.
Note: – each age group could be, for example, 14/U, i.e. not necessarily single age groups.
The events the swimmer competes in will be chosen by themselves with guidance from the coach.