Getting Back in the Water Again: Safe Swim Practices and Virtual Meets
As some states are “opening up” on a limited basis, many teams will be using this time to plan a safe return to the pool.
USA Swimming has posted guidelines for their teams to use while developing their plans to return to the pool safely, and we’d like to share those with you: USA Swimming’s guidelines for Facility Re-Opening Messaging and Planning
And what’s a swim season without swim meets? One way to compete safely is through virtual swim meets! At a virtual meet, each team competes at its own pool, which helps limit the number of people gathering together. Swimmers get to race, improve, and earn those much-loved ribbons!
SwimTopia is excited to offer virtual meet capabilities with our meet management module, Meet Maestro™ (available for free through the end of 2020!). Each team swims at their own pool, times are entered and the score is tallied after each event. Heat sheets and session reports reflect the separate locations, yet the psych sheet, results, and awards are combined as if the meet was in the same place.
Meet Maestro offers maximum flexibility and ease-of-use. Virtual meets can be set up with a neighboring team in your league, or with a team on the other side of the country! You can include as many teams as you’d like—which allows for more flexible scheduling, especially during a compressed season. If reserving empty lanes between swimmers is desired, the automatic assigned lanes features of Meet Maestro make that easy. Teams can even spread the virtual meet out over several days (or even during practice times) if needed.
Parents can track their swimmers’ progress with our mobile app, helping to create that “live meet” feel. The SwimTopia Mobile App will display the combined results for each event as soon as they become available. And Meet Maestro offers full integration with CTS Dolphin wireless timing system, providing fast results (and reducing the amount of paper).
We recently hosted a webinar covering a safe return to the pool and virtual swim meets through Meet Maestro. For the first 20 minutes, we talked about a safe return to practices and meets with Joel Shinofield, Managing Director of Sport Development for USA Swimming. For the next 40 minutes, our CEO, Mason Hale, demonstrated how virtual meets will be run in Meet Maestro.
- You can view a recording of our webinar here: Planning a Safe 2020 Swim Season & Virtual Meets
- We’ve also created a handout to supplement the webinar with some points to consider when planning for a safe return to the pool. See our handout here: SwimTopia’s Safe Swim Planning and Virtual Meets
- And our Help Center has more details about How to Run a Virtual Meet in Meet Maestro
You can also find a lot of great resources and tips on running virtual and regular swim meets on HostGreatMeets.com.
Meet Maestro is included in the price of SwimTopia and is available to SwimTopia customers through their SwimTopia websites today. Meet Maestro is also available to any team that would like to start a free account; it’s completely free through 2020 and will be available for $150 per team, per year, starting in January 2021. To learn more about running meets in Meet Maestro, see our Help Center section on Meet Maestro. There you will also find articles that explain how to ‘test drive’ Meet Maestro, along with a more detailed demo video.
To share ideas and tips with other teams see SwimTopia’s Community. We have a special section for “Rallying during Covid-19” and other topics include building your website, admin tips, running swim meets, and running your team or league.
