Potomac Woods Swim Team

What are time trials? Ever wonder about some of the terms you hear at the pool? Read below to brush up on swim team terms to learn a little more about our season:

SWIM MEETS — Swimmers from PW can participate in A Meets, B Meets, Relay Carnival, Divisionals, Coaches Long Course, and All-Star meets. 

AGE GROUPS — Swimmers are broken up by age group for male and female: 8 years old and younger, 9-10 years old, 11-12 years old, 13-14 years old, and 15-18 years old.

ALL-STAR TIME — The time necessary to qualify to swim in the MCSL All Star Meet.

AUTOMATION — The computerized system of creating meet entries, running and scoring a meet. Automation is used for both A and B meets.

"B" RELAY CARNIVAL —  The "B" Relay Carnival is only open to those swimmers who did not participate in the "A" Relay Carnival. This meet is entirely made up of relay events, there are no individual events at this meet.

BACKSTROKE FLAGS — A string of pennants stretched over the pool so that when performing the backstroke, swimmers will know how far away the wall is in order to successfully execute their turns and finishes.

CERTIFIED OFFICIAL — Unlike other sports where leagues hire paid officials, swim teams rely on volunteers. At each meet, teams must supply a certain number of officials who have attended MCSL certification clinics to learn league rules and procedures. The positions include: referee, starter, chief judge, and stroke-and-turn judges.

Clerk of Course- Swimmers called for a race report first to the Clerk of Course. This is a designated area where parent volunteers check the swimmers in for each event, line them up in lane order and get them to their chairs before their race.  The home team provides the head Clerk of Course and the visiting team provides the assistant clerk of course.  

DIVISIONS / DIVISION H — The MCSL is divided into fifteen divisions (A-O) with six (6) teams in each division. Assignment to a division is based on a team’s performance from the previous year. PW will swim in Division H for the 2024 season.

DQ — To be disqualified from an event. A swimmer (or relay team) can be “DQed” for a number of things, most commonly for not doing a stroke correctly or for a false start. Swimmers may complete their races but their times will not “count” and no points are earned.

EVENT / HEAT — At a swim meet, races are organized by age groups, gender, and stroke. Each race is called an "event." Events are ordered and numbered. Each event may have a series of "heats" (races). Heats will have 6-8 (depending on the pool size) swimmers in each, which are seeded (organized) by swimmer's times (slowest to fastest).

HEAT WINNER — The swimmer who swims the fastest for that heat or group of six swimmers. They are not necessarily the winner of the event, because at a B meet there can be many heats. At an A meet, there are two heats for each age group for freestyle. 

LANE SHEET — The paper used to record times for each event. The lane sheets are on a clipboard with a pen and each lane sheet includes the swimmers' names in that lane for each event and their seed time. One timer from each lane records all three times onto the lane sheet, circles the median time, and gives it to the runner to bring to automation.

IM — Individual Medley, an event in which the swimmer uses all four competitive strokes in the following order: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.

MCSL — Montgomery County Swim League is the body that governs, organizes and sponsors the competitive swimming across the approximately 90 pools that make up the league. http://mcsl.org

MEET PROGRAM — The meet program lists all the swimmers participating in each event, which heat and lane they are in, and their seed times for each event. The meet program will be emailed to all families before the meet and posted on the PWST homepage.

OFFICIALS — Volunteers trained by MCSL to run a meet.

POOL DECK — The concrete area surrounding the pool on all sides.

PRE-TEAM — A developmental program for those swimmers who are learning the fundamentals of swimming. The coaches will hold a pre-team evaluation to assess if swimmers are ready for a pre-team placement. Pre-team swimmers are members of the Potomac Woods swim team and take part in all team activities, including Pep Rallies and Social activities. 

PERSONAL BEST / PR — The swimmers’ best (fastest) time for each event from the whole swim season. The personal best times are used by the coaches to create the line-ups.

POINTS — For each event at an A meet, a first-place finish earns the team 6 points. Second-place earns 4 points, third-place earns 3 points, fourth-place earns 2 points and fifth-place earns 1 point. The points are totaled for each team. The team with the most points wins.

PWSC — Potomac Woods Swim Club (the "pool")

PWST —Potomac Woods Swim Team (the "team")

RESULTS — The results of the events are posted (usually taped to the wall) after they have been verified and scored. After the meet, the complete results are emailed out to the team and can be found on the MCSL website.

SCRATCH — Removal of a swimmer from the lineup.

SEED TIME — The time used by the coaches to chose entries for a meet. These times are listed in the meet program.

STROKES — There are four individual strokes: freestyle, backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke. Each stroke has a set of rules that govern how it should be legally swam.

SWIM CAP — Each swimmer is encouraged to wear a swim cap for practice and meets. For meets, only swim caps with our pool’s name and logo can be worn, OR a plain swim cap with no logo or name.

SWIM TEAM AWARDS BANQUET — This family event is held at the end of the regular season. The coaches give out awards and everyone gets a chance to swim. The night ends with dessert and a video of season highlights.

SWIMTOPIA — This is the website and app used to manage the swim team, meet entries, and swimmers’ times. Parents and/or swimmers use Swimtopia need to mark the swimmer’s availability so the coaches know whether or not they can participate in the meets. Parents and swimmers also use the app to keep track of dates, times, and locations of events.

TEAM REPS — These parent volunteers represent the team at all MCSL meetings, hire and supervise coaches, communicate with the team, work with other team reps to schedule B meets, work with the pool board, answer questions, cheer for our kids, etc...

TEAM SCORE / SCORE — The team score is made up of points earned by individual events and relays. The team score is totaled and announced at half time and at the conclusion of the meet. Only A meets are scored.

TIME TRIALS — Time trials is the opening (practice) meet of every season, swum so new and updated times can be recorded for swimmers