The Hamilton Southeastern Girls Swim & Dive team has only one more meet until the IHSAA Swimming Sectionals. They will start the state tournament on February 5 at Fishers High School with the swimming preliminaries.
With that date being so close, it becomes important for the audience to really understand how the state tournament works, along with the scoring rules for a swim meet.
As far as the tournament goes, it is individual based. The team doesn’t advance as a whole, it’s just the individual swimmers, along with the relay teams representing the school.
There are a few ways to advance out of sectionals. One way is if you place first in your event. “Say I swam the 100 free and I won in my sectional. That would mean I advance to state automatically.” Explains junior swimmer, Ella Chesterfield. Another way to advance is if you meet the state time standard. “This can change because some sectionals like [HSE’s] are really fast,” Chesterfield says, “even if you don’t get first, you could still have the time standard needed to go to state.”
Another important thing to note is that 3 heats are needed for each event. 32 swimmers are required to make up 3 heats, so if they need to fill spots, they will go off of time. If there happens to be a tie, they will bring both swimmers.
Alternates are another aspect of state tournament worth mentioning. Alternates are essentially extra swimmers on a relay team ready to fill in wherever they are needed. The most common occurrence that an alternate would need to be used would be if someone gets injured. If an alternate swims on a sectional relay team, and they advance to state, the alternate can still be on the team. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they swim in state with the team, but they are eligible.
Having covered the tournament rules, it’s important to understand how points are scored.
For individuals, from first to 8th place the points will decrease. For example, if 1st place got 5 points, 2nd place would get 4, 3rd will get 3, and so on.
Relays are different though because they are more point heavy. For example, if 1st place got 10 points, the point values would decrease by a greater amount as you go down the places.
Lastly, you are able to lose points in swim meets. This is called points deducted or disqualified (DQ’s). If you get a DQ you do not get any points for the specific race. Some examples for a DQ could be changing something in your stroke that isn’t legal or false starting.
One thing about false starts is if you jump off the block after the announcer says, “stand please,” the swimmer does not get any points deducted. This would happen if someone were moving on the block, the block isn’t set right, or if someone has jewelry.
With the structure and scoring of the state tournament explained, the focus now turns to the Hamilton Southeastern swim team, as they begin to prepare for their final meet and the state tournament starting on February 5.
Watch a video of Ella Chesterfield explaining these rules on Instagram (@southeasternsn_).
