Time standards.. Time Standards! What do they all mean?
If you've been around Age-Group swimming for even a short period of time, you've probably heard about swimming time standards! We are going to try and take some of the confusion out of the time standard discussion...but first, some basic terminology!
SCY - Short Course Yards (based on a 25-yard pool, which we normally swim at practice)
LCM - Long Course Meters (based on a 50-meter pool, this would be our pool in the LONG direction)
SCM - Short Course Meters (based on a 25-meter pool, I only know of a couple of these in Orange County)
LSC - Local Swimming Committee. This is our branch of the national USA Swimming organization.
Our LSC, 'CA', is 'Southern California Swimming'.
Many of you are familiar with the Irvine Swim League's Championships Meet, where your swimmers need to attain a 'Qualification Time' in order to 'qualify' to swim in events. Age Group Time Standards are very similar, but there are many of them for each age group. Some are used by the LSC to establish qualification times for local meets. Other standards are used for establishing goals for elite swim meets, like Winter Age Group Championships, Spring and Summer Junior Olympics, Junior Age Group Championships (JAG) and even National Team and Olympic Team qualication times!
Up until the beginning of this year, our LSC used a series of time standards named White, Red and Blue. These standards were similar to the national time standards, but to avoid confusion, the LSC changed to use the National Time Standards, which are (in ascenting order);
Nat B
Nat BB
Nat A
Nat AA
Nat AAA
Nat AAAA
Senior Developmental
Sectional
Futures
Nationals
You should consider these time standards as goals or measures of improvement! Most swimmers who attain the higher time standards have spend many years developing their skills and physical conditioning. We at SNAP! are excited to help your swimmers along their swimming journey, but regardless of what time standards they are able to attain, we hope that swimming becomes a way of life that they can enjoy for the long term!
You can view all of the National Time Standards at the Southern California Swimming web site, or click on the following link;
If you have any questions about time standards, or any other swimming-related questions, just let us know!
