Key terms to know: 

Stroke- A stroke is a specific style of swimming. The four strokes are backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke, and freestyle. 

Relay- In a relay, four people compete together for the fastest time. 

Flip turn- During freestyle and backstroke, swimmers will do a flip turn, or will front flip, in front of the wall in their designated lane. After which the swimmer will push off the wall and keep swimming. 

Two-hand touch- A two-hand touch is a different variation of a turn that is done during breaststroke and butterfly. Swimmers must touch the wall with both hands at the same time in order for the turn to be legal. After touching the wall with their hands, swimmers turn and continue swimming the opposite way. 

Pool size-  Every pool is either 25 yards or meters. This means that a meter pool will be longer, so swimmers times will be converted to yards if the pool is in meters. Times from a pool in yards will not be converted. 

Heat/Event: 

The event encompasses what a swimmer will swim once in the pool. Typically, 22 events are held at one meet. Events are organized by stroke. Girls and boys complete each stroke in an event. The events alternate between boys and girls competing at a time. Events are swam in yards or meters, depending on the pool. The times in a meter pool are slower so officials convert them to make it more fair. Within each event, there are heats. Heats divide the swimmers that are competing in that event by time. Heat 1 has the slowest swimmers, and as the heat numbers increase, the swimmers are faster, which makes each heat faster than the last. One length of the pool is 25 yards, making two lengths 50 yards, three lengths 75 yards, and four lengths 100 yards. A medley relay occurs when all four strokes are swam in one relay with a different person swimming each stroke. The order in which they are swimming is backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. A free relay occurs when all four people swim freestyle. They can swim for 200 yards or 400 yards. An individual relay is when a swimmer swims all four strokes by themself. 

Scoring for Swim:

The amount of points a team accumulates in a meet is determined by how each swimmer places in each of their events. First place would receive the most points per event. Then, the subsequent places decrease in points. Points are cumulative, so the team with the most points at the end of the meet wins.