Levels of Open Meets

There will be four tiers of structured competition. Open Meets will be licensed according to the purpose of their competition as Level 1, 2, 3 or 4.

Level 1 is aimed at National qualifiers, or swimmers close to National qualification, looking for opportunities to achieve National qualifying times. These meets will have qualifying times for entry, which will be just below the national times. (see Section on Qualifying Times and Upper Limit Times)

Level 2 is aimed at District qualifiers and will have qualifying times and upper limit times. Access to the ASA ranking information could be used to enable meet organisers to verify that entry times submitted by swimmers fall within the stated range.

Level 3 is for Club swimmers who are looking for County qualifying times and again would have qualifying and upper limit times set at an appropriate level. These meets would provide a programme throughout the year to support the requirements of swimmers below District level.

Level 4 It is intended that the system of licensing may ultimately develop to include a fourth level for club swimmers and those beginning competition through initiatives such as Active Sports.

National qualifying times are accepted from meets licensed at Level 1 & 2
District qualifying times are accepted from meets licensed at Level 1, 2 & 3

Qualifying Times and Upper Limit Times

These are times set by meet organisers for each event in the programme in order to control the number of entries in a meet. A qualifying time is the time that a swimmer must have already achieved in order to enter the competition. However, some meets will also have an upper limit time for each event, which means that swimmers who have previously achieved times faster than the upper limit time are not eligible for this event. The effect of having qualifying times and upper limit times for a meet is to target swimmers in a particular time range.
Qualifying times are set for National, District and most County competitions and these also provide a standard which coaches can use to indicate the level of their swimmers. For example, within a club, swimmers may be selected for particular training groups if they have County, District or National qualifying times.
The requirement of having achieved a qualifying time in order to enter for an event relies significantly on the integrity of coaches, swimmers and parents to submit correct, truthful information. This is a clear expectation within the ASA Code of Conduct. However, with more times being submitted into the National Ranking system it is also possible for times to be checked.