| There
are many different levels in swimming. To achieve these levels, you need
to swim in meets. |
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| To
show off some of your skills, you can join a recreational swim team, so
you can swim in meets. To start off, you can swim in regular recreational
meets. Recreational meets are meets where you improve your times, and
compete against others individually. These meets also help you to advance
to the next level of swimming. |
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The
next level of recreational swimming is zones. When you qualify for zones,
you either get a certain time, or you placed in the top two in your event
in your county. Zones is a meet where the people come from your zone
(example: Eastern Coast) to compete. You compete against others from
different counties as a team, and individually. |
| The
next step to success is sectionals. If you get a certain time that's good
enough to compete in this meet, you get to swim against people from your
zone again. Except, this meet is faster, and you represent yourself. |
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The
next step after sectionals is junior nationals and then nationals. These
two meets are very fast, and the people come from all over the country.
Very few people make it to these two levels, because you have to be a very
fast swimmer. The last step is the Olympic Trials. This is where the
fastest swimmers from all over the world compete, and it's the highest
level in swimming. |
| There's
also other meets you can swim if you don't want to swim recreation. You
can start out by swimming for middle school. Swimming for middle school is
a whole different subject, because you swim as a team, and you are
representing your school. This is also true for high school
swimming, too. When you swim for a high school team, you can get a
certain time for a certain meet higher than high school swimming called
W.I.P.I.A.L.S. This is a meet where some other high school teams
participate too. After W.I.P.I.A.L.S., you can make States, which is the
highest meet to make in this type of swimming. It's the same as
W.I.P.I.A.L.S., except faster. |
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Finally,
there's levels to swimming. Certain times can take you to certain levels.
These certain levels can tell you which meets you can qualify for, and
which ones you can't. It basically tells you how good of a swimmer you
are. The lowest level is a "B" time. Next is "BB",
then "A", "AA", "AAA", and "AAAA"
time, which is the highest time you can get. |
