Info for Visiting Teams
The Tiger Sharks would like welcome you to our neighborhood for our swim meet. We are looking forward to hosting your team and having a great time!
Below is information about our pool and meet operations. Please pass this information along to your coaches, volunteers and swim families.
Location
Our pool is located at 311 Preston Village Way, Cary, NC 27519 next to the pond. Major cross roads are Davis Drive or Morrisville Parkway.
Parking
We have limited parking spaces, so we encourage car pooling. Once the parking lot is full you may park along the road (please park on the poolside only), and at the park shelter, just east of the pool, on the other side of the pond. Preston Village Way is a pass-through for emergency vehicles, so please make sure cars are not parked on both sides of the street.
Facility
We have a 6 lane 25 Yard pool. We have started the process of installing permanent lighting, but unfortunately that work is behind schedule. As such, we will have additional temporary lighting in order to swim past dusk. Regardless, we recommend letting your swimmers know they may want to have clear goggles available for the late events.
Your team's home base for the evening is the area to the immediate right once you pass through the main gate. This area will get shady, but is often sunny at the start of the evening. You are welcome to bring canopies or tents if you have them.
Visitors are encouraged to bring folding chairs.
Warmups
- Home team warm up 4:55 - 5:25pm.
- Visiting team warm up 5:25 - 5:55pm.
- The meet will begin promptly at 6:00pm
Pre-Meet Briefing
There will be two pre-meet briefings:
-
Timers and Recorders
5:30 near the ping pong table to receive the timing equipment and training -
Meet Officials (TSA Rep, S&T, Starters, OOF)
5:45 near the starter
Concessions
We offer concessions where swimmers and families will be able to purchase pizza, hot dogs, snacks and beverages. Cash only. If possible, prior to the entry deadline, please give us an approximation on how many swimmers you will be bringing so we can plan our concession stand accordingly.
Entries & Seeding
Entries in SwimTopia need to be locked by Monday evening 8pm. While TSA guidance is Monday morning, we find that there are always so many changes the day before (and even day of) that we try to wait as long as possible to merge the meet. We will then merge the meet and begin the process of consolidating the meet in Maestro. This means potentially placing swimmers that are swimming in later heats in the opposing team's empty lanes in earlier heats. Additionally, we may move relays (particularly in the older age groups) into lanes that allow us to easily combine the boys/girls relay events into a single heat.
Once our meet consolidation is completed, we will email you to let you know that you may start printing materials. We aim to be done with consolidation before 9pm on Monday evening. At this point you may start printing any of your own materials.
Please do not make any of your own changes once the meet has been seeded in Meet Maestro.
Any lineup changes which need to be made before the meet starts can be made on deck at our timing console, next to the starter.
After the meet starts, changes can only be made via the Clerk of Course (who will also notify the timing console of said changes).
Clerk of Course
We have consolidated our clerk of course under an EZ-up using 6 rows of 6-seat benches. Swimmers are then organized by heat/lane and as the heat in front of them swims, they 'move up' to the next row until it is time for the clerk to walk them to their lane. Please have your clerk talk with our clerk regarding our process. However, you are welcome to continue to stage your swimmers behind the appropriate lanes, but note: swimmers in later heats may not be assigned their "team lane" because of the meet consolidation outlined above.
Runners
You do not need to provide a runner
Printed Materials
We will print out Timer Sheets (lanes 1-6). Any other printed materials your team may need, you will need to bring to the meet. Please do not print until after noon on Tuesday.
Timing/Meet Management
We prefer to run 2 timers per lane, meaning we do not require Order of Finish judges at our home meets. The new TSA rules state that Order of Finish judges are not required when you run a minimum of two timers per lane.
In our preferred meat setup, we time all heats using 2 semi-automated timers and one manual backup stopwatch. We will provide all the timing equipment necessary to run the meet for all lanes (1-6). Each lane will have 2 volunteers, with one volunteer being provided from each team:
- Volunteer 1 (Timer):
- Operates a Colorado Dolphin semi-automated watch
- Operates a manual backup stopwatch
- Volunteer 2 (Recorder):
- Operates a Colorado Dolphin semi-automated watch
- Verifies swimmer names and writes both the primary and backup times on the timer sheets.
If you cannot supply 6 timers, please email our TSA representative, and we can run a basic 1 timer per lane, with each team supplying an order of finish judge. In this scenario, we audit all main events against the OOF results. The process for that is 2 of the 3 results must match. (timing, OOF1, OOF2). The audit process is
- if timing results and OOF1 result match. no change
- if timing results differ from OOF1 judge, check timing results against the OOF2 Judge.
- if timing results match OOF2, no change
- if OOF1 and OOF2 results match, override timing results
- if no results match (all 3 differ) then we'd get the TSA reps involved and likely declare a tie between the results that are at odds.
Please make sure you have coordinated with our TSA Rep which timing configuration we are running at this meet, and make sure you can bring the necessary number of timers.
Times for all swims will be loaded on-deck into Meet Maestro and ultimately imported into SwimTopia. Our data managers handle the data collection for us. Our usual process: the runner will take the DQs and timer sheets to the data manager. If Maesto has a disagreement between the two semi-automated times, then the manual backup time is added so the system can determine the official time based on the 3 watch times.
Ribbons
Now that pink and blues are a thing of the past, we request that your ribbon writers bring their own computer to the meet so they can run reports and work at their own pace.
Alternatively, you can print your ribbons offline after the meet.
We will be writing our ribbons on the night from meet maestro via laptop and can put your team's ribbons together for someone to collect from our ribbon writers at the end of the meet on Tuesday night.
Please let us know which option you prefer.
Parent/Coaches Relay
We would like to hold a parents/coaches relay after the breaststroke events. Please let us know if you have any interest!
Contact Information
Thank you,
The Preston Village Swim Team
