Dam West Dolphins

What is a Heat Sheet? What Does it say?

The Heat Sheet is a program that shows all the participating swimmers and what events they will participate in as well as the heat number and lane number. The announcer will say the event and heat number and there is usually a board with this information as well though it differs at each pool.

Changes and Combined Events:

Changes to the Heat Sheet will be made the morning of the meet based on swimmers who don't arrive on time or do not attend. We will also "combine" races to speed up the meet. For example, if we have 3 girls swimming Fly in the 15-17 age group and 3 boys -- we will combine them into one heat to save time.

The announcer will say if heats are combined. Please pay attention when it gets close to the time of your swimmer's event.

Event Number: 

There are 90 events in each meet.  You can find the Order of Events HERE.

Heat Number: 

In each of the 90 events there are HEATS. Each heat has 5-8 swimmers depending on the size of the pool.  (One per lane.)

Lane Number: 

This will tell you which lane your swimmer is scheduled to be in.

Seed Time: 

Once a swimmer participates legally in an event, they will have a "seed time" in that event for the next meet. Swimmers are placed in heats and relays according to their seed times*.  The seed time is the fastest time the swimmer obtained in the past for that particular event. 

Record Holder:

Just under the event name you will find the "MHSL<date>" which tells you the Record in that event.  It lists the record time, the year it was set and the swimmer's name.

Ex:  MHSL2021    13.81   2015  Reid Arendale

All-Star Time:

Below the Record, you  will find the Time required to qualify as an All-Star in that event.  It will be a Time followed by "ASXX" (the current swim year.)  If there are swimmers that have qualified for All-Stars you will see the "ASXX" next to their time.

Ex:  19.00   AS21  

In this example, if Laniyah Love were the swimmer, we would  mark her arm as:  

13-2-6

Event 13, Heat 2, Lane 6

Relay medleys are swum in this order: 1) Backstroke, 2) Breaststroke, 3) Butterfly, 4) Freestyle.

In this example, if Lance Reed were the swimmer, we would mark his arm as: 

5-2-5/3

Event 5, Heat 2, Lane 5 / 3rd swimmer (doing the butterfly.)