Time Standards

 Age Group Time Standards

Age group time standards are used to designate swim meets.  Ask your coach where to look up National and Pacific Time Standards.  The following list is how they designate swim meets where swimmers are broken up into age groups.

C/B/A+

BEAR attends one C/B/A+ per month.  All swimmers regardless of swimming level can participate.  These are the meets designated ’Team Meets’

B/A+

Sometime, especially during the summer, there are B/A+ meets.  This means you can only swim in an event that you have a minimum of a ’B’ time standard. 

A+

There are a couple of meets each year that you need an ’A’ time standard to qualify.  These meets are designated A+ meets.  This means you can only swim in an event that you have a minimum of an ’A’ time standard.

JO

There are three meets per year that you need a ’JO’ time to qualify.  ’JO’ means Junior Olympic time standard.  At Junior Olympics you need to have a ’JO’ time to swim in each event.

FARW

Far Westerns happens twice a year.  It is one of the biggest and fastest age group meets in the country.  Teams bring there fastest swimmers from all over the US .  Far Westerns is attended by swimmers from around the world (i.e., Canada , Mexico , China , Japan ).

Senior Swimming
Senior swimming means no age groups; open to all ages.  This is a big step for swimmers and happens for swimmers at different ages depending on speed.  The following is a list of Senior swimming levels.  At this point the swimmer begins to travel to compete and an approximate monetary value is given to each step. This is the yearly cost for families planning to support there athlete to travel and compete.