Events

Swimming

There are a lot of events to choose from at swim meets. Actually, depending on how old you are there are 15 possible races to choose not including relays. In the winter, fall, and spring swimming is in an indoor pool that is measured in yards. In the summer, the pools are usually outside and are measured in meters.

A swimmer can swim four events each day at a meet plus one relay per day. The meets are usually two days long. Some meets are three days long. Large meets often only let you swim three events a day. (To the far right is Michael Phelps, an Olympic swimmer, who received many gold and silver medals)

For freestyle there are six possible races a swimmer can participate in. These include: 50 yard/meters, 100 yards/meters, 200 yards/meters, 500 yards/ 400 meters, 1000 yards/ 800 meters, 1650 yards/ 1500 meters.

For backstroke there are only three possible races. These races are 50 yards/meters, 100 yards/meters, and 200 yards/meters. Backstroke is like freestyle but on your back. In order to have a good backstroke race you have to have a good start, good position, good flip turn, and an awesome finish.

Butterfly is the newest stroke to be added to swimming. It was because a swimmer was doing a breaststroke race and did butterfly. It followed all the rules to breaststroke. It was so much faster than breaststroke that all swimmers stared to do it during breaststroke. So the board decided that butterfly would be considered its own stroke. The board had to make stricter rules for each stroke. For butterfly there are also only three events. These are 50 yards/meters, 100 yards/meters, and 200 yards/meters. For most people butterfly is the hardest stroke.

Breaststroke is a very simple stroke to learn at first. After you understand and can do the basics your coaches work with you on making your stroke faster and faster. The different events you can swim for breaststroke are 50 yards/meters, 100 yards/meters, and 200 yards/meters.

The individual medley is a mixture of all the strokes. The different events are 100 yards/meters, 200 yards/meters, and 400 yards/meters. During all individual medley races each stroke has an equal amount of yardage.

Relays are big point makers for your team. If you have the right people in the relay your team could win and you could get a lot of points. There are four people in one relay. During a medley relay each swimmer swims one of the four strokes. The five main types of relays 200 freestyle, 200 medley, 400 freestyle, and 400 medley.