Swimmeets are fun and last about two hours. For duel meets (us against anotherteam) we do each event once for JV and V. For the first few JV meets wehave short events where longer events are shortened. Later in the seasonwe have competitions where we either compete against our other teams inour county, conference, section, or other freshman. More on these othermeets later in the season.

Abbreviations:

HowMeets Run (left to right):

Warm-upsstart almost immediately. The team hostingthe duel meet starts their warm up almost right after school. That wayby the time the challenging team gets there, the home team will be almostdone while the challenging team starts warming up. This way helps in teamand also a whole JV or V team doesn't have to squeeze into three lanesfor the whole time of warm-up.
Nextcomes a group of four races. For each race the JV goes first then followedby the V. The first half of the meet goes JV-200 Medley Relay andV- 200 Medley Relay.Here four JV/V swimmers are placed in a lane together. The first swimmerswims 50 yards back stroke. Then the breast stroker dives in to do 50 yardsof breast. Followed by the swimmer going fly then lastly the swimmer goingfree. Next comes JV- 200 Free andV-200 Free. Here one swimmer swims free stylefor 200 yards. After that is theJV- 200 IndividualMedleyand theV- 200 Individual Medley.Here one swimmer swims 200 yards. Every 50 yards has their own stroke.The first 50 yards is Butterfly, then 50 yards of back stroke, 50 yardsof breast stroke, and finally 50 yards of freestyle. The last race of thefirst half is the fastest. For JV and V,swimmers sprint 50 yards freestyle asfast as they can.
Thenfor about a half an hour or so, the diversget to shine. The divers go with the firstone being on one team and the next one on the other and so on. There aresix rounds of diving, and divers are scored by three judges with a possiblenumber of points of six or something, I'm not really sure. Each dive hasit's own number and degree of difficulty. Divers are judge on how wellthey do their dive.
Afterdiving a tenor fifteen minute warm-up begins to loosenswimmers muscle and preparing them for the upcoming races. After the warm-upcomes the JVand V  100Butterfly. Here swimmers get the joy of swimming100 yards of butterfly. Then comes a JV andV 200 freestylerelay. In this relay, four swimmers swim 50yards of freestyle. Next JV and Vswimmers swim in the 100yards backstroke. Then comes the 100yards breaststroke for both JVand V swimmers. The last race of the day isthe 400 freestylerelay. In thisrelay there are four JV or V swimmerseach  swim 100 yards to make-up thisrelay.
Afterthe meet we shake hands and if it's a home meet we clean up the pool beforechanging and going out to dinner with the team.
 

ShortenedEvents:

Forthe first few JV meets the hosting team gets to choose whether or not theJV is swimming short events. Coaches get this option up to the first fewweeks of the season before long events are required. When going short eventsthese long events are shortened to:
                        200 FR - 150 FR 
                        200 IM - 100 IM 
                        300 FR - 500 FR 
                        100 FY - 50 FY 
                        100 BK - 50 BK 
                        100 BR - 50 BR 

Rulesand Regulations:

Justabout all the rules for competitive high school swimming are stupid. Theseare a few of the rules. If you do not follow the rules, you are disqualified.Beware, some of them are completely pointless.
         -swim suits cannot have a logo larger then then 3/4 inches on them or aname of 
         another team or group
         -caps and goggles can have only one logo on it (team name can appear oncaps)
         -no jewelry
         -swimmers cannot swim more then four events
         -when doing a flip turn you must touch the wall
                             -flips and open turns are legal
                             -when turning for breast stroke and butterfly both hands must touch thewall 
                             at the same time
         -strokes and kicks must be legal
         -you cannot start before the starter starts you