Quote:
Originally Posted by JAG
You've probably explained it before earlier in the thread, but can you explain what seed time, sectional cut, and state cut mean? What happens if they get a time below state cut or sectional cut?
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Hey JAG,
Glad to explain…In swimming, like track, the fastest in the event gets the middle lane and as you move outward each swimmer is slightly slower. So if you were to look at a Heat Sheet (the sheet that instructs every swimmer what event number, heat, and lane they are in), you’d see something like this…
Code:
Event 1 – Girls 10 and Under 50 Butterfly
Heat 1
1. Breeze, Bailey S 10 Gold-GA 34.25
2. Weimer, Abby R 10 ABSC-GA 33.78
3. Munson, Katy 10 CAD-GA 32.77
4. Coffee, Tory 10 GA-GA 32.65
5. Rucker, Tori 10 GCAT-GA 29.86
6. VanBrunt, Grace 10 GCAT-GA 29.86
7. Ulett, Tristen D 10 SA-GA 29.93
8. Altera, Ashley K 10 DYNA-GA 31.65
9. Hart, Kennedy C 10 SA-GA 33.28
10. Galbraith, Hailey 9 Gold-GA 34.12
The first column above is the lane, the second the name, 3rd is age, 4th team and last is the seed time.
So the seed time is the time the coaches put down for the swimmer to enter the event with, and typically the time is the swimmers personal best (this is actually automated to use the personal best time by extracting it from the USA Swimming DB, but there are times the coaches change the seed time). So in essence when you see my references in the write ups about Seed Time, what I’m noting is the time that the kids were entered into the event with, and showing you a quick guide as to what is probably their personal best. There have been times in write ups where I note that the seed time isn’t a personal best, but that is rare.
Now the State Cut and Sectional Cut times are performance based standards that swimmers must meet in order to compete in those events.
So this weekend (2/22) is the Georgia State Championship Meet, and in order to compete in an event at that meet, the swimmer must have reached the “State Cut” time. Somewhere in this thread I believe I’ve posted all the state cuts for the 10 and under age group (I didn’t do it for the 12Us yet, because Brett wasn’t going to get any outside of Breaststroke so there was no need), but regardless when you see a State Cut reference in an event, that is the time my kids are shooting for to qualify for the State Meet.
The Sectional Meet is a huge step up from the State Meet level. Swimming divides the country into 4 Zones…Western, Central, Southern, and Eastern. Then those Zones are sub-divided into different Sections…in the Southern Zone there are 3 Sections and Georgia is in the Eastern one (So the meet Bailey qualified for in Greensboro in mid March is the Eastern Sectional Southern Zone Age Group Championships). Qualifying for this event works the same way as State, only the time standards are much tougher. For instance…for a 10 year old boy to make State in the 50 Free he has to swim a 33.39 to make Sectionals the time drops to 30.69. A better example might be the 500 Free where the state time is a 7:21.99 but the Sectional Time is a 6:35.19…
Just for reference…the Cumming Chattahoochee Gold team had 21 kids qualify for State. 15 of them were on the “Gold” team and 8 were on the Region and Senior teams (much harder to qualify for State as swimmers get older). Out of the 15 Gold team swimmers only 4 have Sectional Cuts…