Just a little note to remind you about the time sheets and what goes into producing them for you.

OFFICIAL TIMES During the swim meet, as the swimmers complete events, we coaches right down the times that we get for the swimmers on our stopwatch. However, these times are not the official times. The official times are the times that are posted by the meet secretary. When a meet is run with touchpads, the computer time that results from the touchpad is the most often used as the official time. The time on a stopwatch is only used as a back-up time. When a meet is run with stopwatches, the official time is the middle time of the 3 times recorded by the stopwatches.

PRODUCING THE SHEETS Once I get the all the official times, I then put all the times into my computer. After this is done, I print out new up-dated time sheets for all the swimmers who participated in the last swim meet. I usually will only produce a list of the fastest 4 times for each event. If a swimmer does not show a time for an event for which they recently participated in, then there is a good chance that the time was not fast enough to make the top 4. I then examine each swimmer’s sheet for information about the swimmer’s performance as well for any interesting trends within the groups that we as coaches need to recognize. While doing this I will highlight the recently participated events. If the swimmer has swum in a new event or has dropped time in an event, I will also place a sticker or stamp by that event.

PARENTS & SWIMMERS RESPONSIBILITY The total time I spend on producing these time sheets usually involves approximately 6-7 hours of work. So I hope you can understand why it can be frustrating when I see the time sheets left behind on the pool deck after practice, or when parents and swimmers casually dismiss the importance of the time sheets, or the effort that goes into producing them.

It is my hope that upon receiving the time sheets, parents and swimmers take the time to look them over and talk about the information they find within them. Look for things like the time improvements, the establishment of new time standards, for trends within specific strokes. Use them to see what events are not being swum and what are being swum regularly. This should be helpful when signing up for the next meet.

MISTAKES As many of you know already, I will make mistakes. A normal meet produces over 300 times that I must record and then enter into the computer. If you notice a mistake on your time sheet, simply right me a note on the time sheet and place it back into my file. I will then correct it and return a new sheet to you.

Ultimately it is your responsibility to make sure that you have your swimmer’s best times. After a meet, I will produce time sheets as soon as I can. Many times, however, it may take me days to get them out to you. If you need your swimmer’s new times to enter in a new meet on the Monday following the meet, then you need to get your own swimmer’s times.

Coach Devon.