Meet Entry Guidelines
As the club membership continually progresses, new members to the squads may find it difficult to find information on how to enter meets, on which meets to enter and on what paperwork is required when entering.
Please read the bullets below for some guidelines. If you are still struggling, or require some clarification, please ask Ben Taylor or email via siscmeets@gmail.com
Fixtures
- The new website has 2 calendars:
The general calendar has dates of each meet with approximate start times.
The Meets and Team Events calendar has more specific details for each meet, including dates, venue, level of the meet, registration deadline date, details of events and entry forms and fees.
- Initially official times can be acquired through entering a Level 4 competition and some Level 3 competitions (this will be outlined in the Promoter’s Conditions for that specific competition).
- SISC run a Club Championships at Level 4 throughout the second half of the year, this is an ideal time for swimmers new to the club or in Nemos and Minnows to start competing. You can also enter other Level 4 Competitions to acquire these times.
- As a club, we advise you to enter as many events as possible at the Club Championships so that you have ranking times for when you need to use them throughout the season.
- Specific competitions require times that were only achieved at a certain Level of meet during a specific time window. For example, to qualify for a Regional competition, the time must have been swum at a Level 3 meet or above normally from the preceding October.
Entries
- Conditions of the event and a SISC version of the entry form for all competitions will usually be posted on the website on the Meets and Team Events calendar and placed on the notice board outside the changing rooms.
- You need to fill in all of the details correctly on the entry form. To find your Swim England number, go to: https://www.swimmingresults.org/biogs/ , enter your surname and scroll down to find the correct entry. If you cannot find yourself you may not be registered. If this is the case please email: siscmembership@gmail.com
- To enter Level 1/2 and most Level 3 competitions you will need official times which are stored on the Swim England Rankings Database. A history of each swimmers times are available from the Swim England website - https://www.swimmingresults.org/individualbest/ .
- Use the times from the Swim England database to ensure swimmers meet the criteria for each race. Some events require times faster than a certain cut-off, some events require times to be slower than a certain cut-off. These qualifying times will clearly be shown in the promoters’ conditions.
- The conditions will also specify the age group to check qualifying times against, some events will be age at the date of the event, some events will be age at 31 December.
- If you are entering your first Level 4 licensed competition and don’t have any times you can just tick the box, or alternatively enter a time from an unlicensed competition or coach estimated time.
- Some competitions require Short Course times (SC, 25m) and some competitions require Long Course times (LC, 50m). You can use http://www.pullbuoy.co.uk/times to convert your times either way. Please use the ASA Tables function to convert. Please do this before submitting your form as this speeds up the administration and entry process on the club side.
Payments
- Payments for ALL competitions should be made online through the SISC Open Meets bank account. Note this is not the same account that training fees are paid into. A small additional charge may be added to each race entered to cover the cost of poolside passes for coaches and poolside managers. This will be detailed on the entry form if this is the case.
- Please ensure you note the online payment reference used when submitting your entry form and follow the format specified on the entry form to aid reconciliation of payment against entries.
- Unfortunately due to the demand placed on our Meet Entry Secretary and the tight turnaround time for the entries to be submitted once received; no late entries will be accepted.
As a final note, there are many parents who have been through the same process of learning so please contact someone if you are unsure of anything, whether that be another parent on the balcony, the Coaching Staff or any of the Committee.