Licensed meets are swum as 'age on a particular day' - this is the age of the swimmer at midnight on the day of the event or the final day of a series of events forming part of one competition whichever is the later.

Level 1, 2 and 3 meets - the minimum age for competition is 8 yrs.

Level 4 meet - minimum age for competition is 7 yrs.

Qualifying Times and Upper Limit Times

These are times set by meet organisers for each event in the programme in order to control the number of entries in a meet.

A qualifying time is the time that a swimmer must have already achieved in order to enter the competition. However, some meets will also have an upper limit time for each event, which means that swimmers who have previously achieved times faster than the upper limit time are not eligible for this event. 

The effect of having qualifying times and upper limit times for a meet is to target swimmers in a particular time range.

Acceptance Criteria

Even with qualifying and upper limit times, some meets will be over-subscribed.

All meets are required to make a clear statement regarding acceptance criteria for entries.

This could include one or more of the following:

• Top (x) number taken in an event, based on the submitted entry times. This is a standard procedure for regulating the number of swimmers in an event, even if some of the other options below are adopted.
• Entries only open to swimmers from a restricted area (e.g. Region) then the remaining places filled from outside the area.
• First come – first served. This ensures that an individual swimmer is accepted in all the events for which they have the qualifying time, even though they may be slower in some events than those who are rejected.  This is a useful procedure with the younger swimmers who are being encouraged to compete over a range of events.