Picking Swim Meet Events

There are so many different ways events are picked. Biggest suggestion is for coaches to pick the swimmers events. This makes it so the coach needs to pay attention to the rules of the entries that are indicated on the Fact Sheet. If your team uses Team Unify, this is easy, as all you have to do is commit to the event, and then leave a note for the coach. The coach has to approve entries anyway, so if they see a swimmer no events, they go in, check the note left, and then pick the event. If your team doesn't use team unify, contact the coach via e-mail or after practice.

So, coaches how do you pick events? There is no perfect way to select events. There are some guidelines to be sure that you are developing a good age-group swimmer. The biggest one is be sure that they swim all 4 strokes. Don't allow a swimmer to decide that they are only going to do their best event, as this is not in the best interest of the swimmer in the long run.

Some teams mandate meets. If your team does this, then the coach will know exactly how many meets they are attending, what meets, and how to configure a great schedule that will allow multiple opportunities in their main 5 - 6 events, and also be sure that they do all the events in a season. Some teams also mandate events. This is where a group is required to swim particular events, and then they choose the other events that they want to do for the meet.

If you are a team like I coach, participation in meets is purely optional. It does make event selection a little harder, but you can still use some ideas to select the best events. First thing, swim max events almost all the time. Forget about the kid not having the energy to do 4 or 5 events in a day. There is time between events, and kids have a lot of energy. Get them use to the long event schedule. Next have a variety of strokes. Again, best to develop IMers at the age-group level and beginning senior level. Next, always try to push the envelope when it comes to longer events. This makes them tougher both physically, and most importantly, mentally. If a swimmer is going to a lot of meets that season, you can put tough events with a smaller event schedule. Other swimmers you want to push them a little more and mix the long events in with the longer event schedule.

The toughest thing is to balance, long-term success with challenging events and opportunities in best events to try to make a time standard. Due to my philosophy, I'd rather develop long-term than to provide opportunity, but I do give in at times to focus on events they are close to making a cut in, especially those that only go to a smaller number of meets.

I think that IMR and IMX programs by USA Swimming are good programs to help get kids to swim the events they may not want to do. Swimmers who have high goals in the sport, should be trying to make it to select camps, where they can train with some of the other fast swimmers in the Zone. This is done by being the top time in a zone for an event, or having one of the higher IMX scores in the zone. USA Swimming believes that swimmers who are good at the IMX eveents, are the swimmers who will be the fast swimmers in the long run, and that is why they have developed the camp system with this format.

Selecting events can be tough, and you are going to give in at times, but do your best to stay within the guidelines. Be sure to get swimmers to realize that challenging themselves to new events when their coach feels they are ready, is good thing for their development as a swimmer.