Open Meets...What are they?

We have recently been asked by a few parents about Open Meets. What are they and who are they aimed at?

Open meets are run by swimming clubs or groups of swimming clubs and cover a full range of age groups and events and occupy a full weekend or just one day at a weekend.

These are galas designed for the individual swimmer, although they will still swim under their clubs name.There is a fee payable (by the swimmer) for each event entered – usually around £3.00 to £4.00 per event.

The importance of open meets is that they give swimmers valuable experience of competition and above all provide them with times to measure their progress. They are also very important to obtain qualifying times for County, Regional and National competitions.(Licensed meets from levels 1,2 and 3 use computerised results service to enable data to go into the national ranking system. You can check your rankings if you have competed in one of these on the British Swimming website at British Swimming - under swimming-rankings, you will need your ASA Registration number for this).

The meets are in four levels and reflect the grade of swimmer for whom the competition is designed.

Level 1 is aimed at National qualifiers, or swimmers close the National qualification, looking for opportunities to achieve National qualifying times.

Level 2 is aimed at 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. (our own club champs would be classed as a level 4)

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 cannot have achieved a time faster 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.

A swimmer is not chosen to compete in opens but the club does recommend certain galas and would like swimmers to support these.
Any swimmer aged 9 and over is welcome to attend open meets providing they meet the qualifying criteria, however that swimmer MUST be Category Two Registered.

The club has an open meet co-ordinator - Steve Beecham (Steve does the small pool on Saturday nights)Steve usually works out which Open Meets are suitable for our swimmers and hands out the entry information to those swimmers that are Cat 2 registered.

These are some of the Open Meets swimmers from our club attend.

Open Meets 2010

Some swimmers choose different open meets to the ones Steve picks. A full list of Open Meets throughout the country can be found by clicking on the link below. All we ask is that we are notified if the swimmer is taking part in an open meet so that all times achieved can be added to the clubs database and that club galas should take preference.

Licensed Meets Calender


Alan