Organising your swim meet with OrderWhizz

Two to three months out:

Book a venue.

Planning and executing an open meet for an amateur swimming club takes a lot of administrative organisation and coordination. Once the decision has been made by the club’s executive committee to run a meet, the first thing to do is to book a venue, and usually this needs to happen several months in advance. Most swimming clubs have pools in leisure centres that they are affiliated with but the use of these pools is shared by the general public and other organisations offering training sessions such as schools or private tutors so it’s important to give everyone as much notice as possible to secure the date you want.

Most of the level 3 galas that the average swimming club might run take place over both days of a weekend and from start to finish each day, you need six to eight hours to run all the events in the swimming repertoire, for both boys and girls. This requirement essentially takes the swimming pool out of action for any other parties, except those taking their 6am wake-up dip.

For these reasons and the need for the leisure centre facility to publish their timetable of events, swimming meets need to be booked months in advance.

Hire equipment and staff

In addition to the venue, any additional functions not already covered from within the club also need to be booked in good time. Examples of this are booking the electronic timing system and the personnel to run it; the meet referee and any other qualified officials that the club doesn’t contain within its own ranks and catering, it is customary to provide lunch or tea for all officials and volunteers, without whom the meet would not be possible.

Apply for a licence

To run a legitimate swimming meet, where times recorded are accepted onto the national rankings database, you need a licence from your national swimming body which ensures you have adhered to the conditions and standards necessary for an open meet at the level you wish See (https://www.swimming.org/sport/licensed-meets) for definitions of the different levels 1 to 4.

The promoter for the open meet, usually a member of the hosting club’s executive committee, needs to apply for a licence before the meet can be publicised. Approved meets can be found on the national body’s website (e.g. https://www.swimmingresults.org/licensed_meets/). Once a meet is approved and a licence is granted, the hosting club will publish the promoter’s conditions and meet event timetable so other clubs, wishing to attend the meet, can collect interest from within their club and send their entries into the hosting club for inclusion in the meet program. In terms of timing, getting the licence and meet conditions published should be done as early as possible but at least 2 months before the event so participating clubs have time to get their entries in and plan their own training timetable.

One to two months out:

Collate entries and decide provisional order of events

The hosting club collates all the entries ahead of the published entry deadline and once all the payments are all in, they can work out a provisional order of events, where swimmers are placed in heats for the particular races they have entered. In the week leading up to the event, you will get a number of withdrawals which will obviously affect the heat numbers, but to fill in the missing gaps, a club can offer time-trials on the day which also provides an opportunity to collect more money for the event.

Up to one month out:

Check staffing and equipment and publicise the event

In the two weeks leading up to the event, you need to ensure you have all the coaches, officials and volunteers available to help run, supervise and marshal the competitors. This is a good time to publish the availability of spectator tickets online, using OrderWhizz, so parents and other spectators can plan properly. This is particularly important if you have a limit on the number of seats in the viewing gallery as parents particularly want to know they will be able to watch. Additionally you can pre-sell club mechanise online, such as hoodies, swimming hats, drinks bottles, club tattoos or raffle tickets.

Leading up to the event, there is a list of other equipment and supplies you need to make sure will be available on the day. This includes stopwatches, which are used as a back-up to the timing system; medals and ribbons, if you are giving them out for the first 6 placed swimmers in each event; reams of paper as each session of the gala requires the heat sheets (swimmers in each heat) and lane sheets (the specific swimmers for each lane) to be printed out. This of course, means you require a fast printer and spare toner.

T-Shirts for volunteers and marshalls can be required as well as coloured bands for spectators who have paid to watch from the viewing gallery. If you are not using an online ordering system like OrderWhizz, you will need a cash float to accept cash payments and also a POS terminal to accept card or contactless transactions. If wifi or network connectivity is an issue at the venue, using an online system is the easiest and quickest way to admit spectators into the event.

One week out:

Last minute changes

In the week leading up to the meet you invariably will get withdrawals for a variety of reasons. This will mean the provisional heat order will need to be changed so that you don’t have empty lanes. Offering time-trials on the day is a way to fill-up the 8 lanes available for each heat but this requires additional administration to collect interested swimmers and then being able to inform them if a space is available. You then need to collect the race fee payment from them. This involves a lot of running around by meet volunteers. Using an online system like OrderWhizz to help with this can be a real boost in reducing the hassle.

Once the meet is underway, the timing system and the software used to communicate with it usually runs smoothly but still a lot of printing is required to publish the results of each heat and event in each age group for each gender. These open meets take a lot of planning and organisation but they are an excellent experience for the young swimmers aiming to fulfil their potential and those attempting to qualify for country, regional or national competitions. With good systems in place they can also be a good source of revenue for the club to help invest in the coaching and facilities for the club.

Good luck with your meet!