SMRT Family
101.

Welcome to SMRT!

Welcome to SMRT, the City of Charleston Southern Marlins Racing Team! This guide — SMRT Family 101 — is built to help you navigate the world of year-round swim team, whether this is your first season or your fifth.

Year-round swimming has its own language, its own apps, and its own rhythm. This guide walks you through the essentials: signing in, committing your swimmer to meets, understanding time standards, reading a heat sheet, and knowing what to expect as a swim family.

Who Can Help You?

There are many veteran parents on the team happy to answer questions, but your Board Members are also readily available by email and have been elected specifically to serve the team and its members. Don't hesitate to reach out — no question is too small.

For anything about training, events, or your swimmer's development, Head Coach Kristen Mullen also welcomes questions directly from parents.

Kristen Mullen, Head Coach — kristenmullen@hotmail.com  •  843-609-1823

Signing In & Navigating the Portal

Signing in is a breeze. Here's how to get started:

1. Go to the team website and click Sign In in the top right corner.
2. A window will appear — click Sign In again if you already have an account, or Continue to Lessons Registration if you're brand new to SMRT.
3. Once your identity is verified, a menu appears on the left side of your screen. This is your home base — manage your account, check events, and commit your swimmer to meets from here.

The two menu choices you'll use most:

• My Account — billing information, payment instructions, due dates, and any late fees.
• Events & Competition — meet schedules, commitments, results, and time standards.

Your Team Portal: SportsEngine Motion

Everything above works the same whether you're on the website or in the SportsEngine Motion app — same account, same info, just in your pocket. This is the one app we want every family to really lean into. Here's what you can do in it:

Once you're signed in, look for your family's name at the top right of the home screen to make sure you're viewing the right account before checking balances or registering for events.

Committing Your Swimmer to a Meet

Here's an important distinction: as a parent, your job is to commit your swimmer to the meet. Coaches then choose your swimmer's individual events and relays based on times, strategy, and team needs — you're not selecting events directly. That said, when you commit, there's a comment field where you can request specific events for your swimmer. Coaches review these requests, but the final call on entries is theirs.

1. Under Events & Competition, find the meet on the calendar. It will say Attend / Decline (or Edit Commitment if you've already responded).
2. Click your swimmer's name — a dropdown appears at the top right with the choice to attend or decline.
3. Select Yes, please sign [swimmer] up for this event to commit them to the meet. If you'd like to request specific events, add them in the comment field here.
4. That's it on your end! Coaches review qualifying times and requests, then enter your swimmer's events. You'll see the final entries once approved — look for Pending or Approved next to each swimmer's name.

The Event Home Page

Every meet has an Event Home Page — a PDF from the host team with meet fees, heat fees, max sign-ups per session, finals info, warm-up times, and facility rules. Find it under View/Edit All Meet Events → Forms/Documents.

Scratching Events

If your swimmer needs to scratch (withdraw from) an event, timing matters — especially for finals. Every host team sets its own scratch deadlines and procedures in that meet's Event Home Page PDF, and those rules can vary from meet to meet. All scratches need to be discussed with a SMRT coach on deck at the meet before they're official.

How to Read a Heat Sheet

A heat sheet lists every swimmer entered in every event, organized by heat and lane. It looks like a lot — but you really only need to find three things: the event, the age group, and your swimmer's row.

Seed time = entry time going into the race — used to assign heats and lanes, not a prediction of the finish.

Standard Age Groups

SMRT swimmers compete within these standard USA Swimming age brackets:

Most events are split by gender within each age group (e.g., Girls 11-12, Boys 11-12). Sometimes, especially with smaller entry counts, events are swum as mixed heats — boys and girls racing together — but still scored separately by gender. So don't be surprised to see your swimmer in a heat with the opposite gender; the final results will still rank them against their own gender.

How Heats Are Seeded

Heats within an event are lined up from slowest to fastest — the slowest heat swims first, and the fastest heat swims last. Within each heat, the fastest seed time gets the center lane (lane 5 in a 10-lane pool, lane 4 in an 8-lane pool), with the next-fastest swimmers fanning out to either side. This is called straight seeding, and it's what you'll see at most regular-season meets.

Championship meets often use circle seeding instead. Rather than stacking all the fastest swimmers into one final heat, the top seeds are split between the last few heats (usually the final three, sometimes just two), alternating so all of them stay competitive: the #1 seed gets the center lane of the very last heat, #2 gets the center lane of the next heat up, #3 swims next to #1, #4 swims next to #2, and so on, working outward and up through the heats. The takeaway for you: at a championship meet, don't assume the last heat has all the fastest swimmers — check the last two or three heats.

For these long-distance races, make sure your swimmer has a counter and a timer on deck — a parent or another swim friend can help. If you need help finding someone to count or time, let your coaches know well ahead of time.

Meet-Day Apps

What to Pack & the Meet-Day Timeline

Pack This

• Heat sheet access (Meet Mobile or printed) and a Sharpie for marking events
• Extra suit, cap, and goggles
• Cash — for heat sheets, concessions, and parking at many venues
• Folding chairs, and shade/canopy if outdoors
• A light layer for outside the building during cooler months — the pool itself runs warm indoors year-round, even in summer
• Snacks and water for the whole session — meets often run long
• A dry towel and a wet-suit bag for the ride home

A Typical Timeline

• Warm-up window — pool time to loosen up before racing. Arrive on time; this isn't optional.
• Positive check-in (if required) — confirms your swimmer is present, closes well before the session starts.
• Session start — events run in psych-sheet order. Sessions commonly run 3–5 hours.
• Prelims vs. finals — at bigger meets (11 & up), a fast prelims swim can advance to finals that same day or evening.

Swimsuits: Tech Suits & Proper Fit

A true tech suit is a high-compression racing suit built with bonded or taped seams (not sewn), often in woven fabric that extends past the hips. That construction is what makes it fast — and also what makes it restricted. USA Swimming does not allow swimmers 12-and-under to wear true tech suits, except at a short list of elite national-level meets.

What 12-and-under swimmers can wear instead is sometimes called a 12U tech suit — really just a racing-cut suit with sewn seams only. Woven-fabric styles can't extend past the hips, and knit-fabric styles can't extend past the knee. It's a lighter, simpler suit than a true tech suit, but still built for racing rather than practice.

On our team, tech suits are typically saved for Last Chance meets or championship-level meets — not everyday competition. Occasionally a swimmer wears one when they have a very small amount of time to shave off going into an important race. If you're unsure whether or when your swimmer should wear one, ask your coach — they'll help you make that call.

How a Racing Suit Should Fit

Racing suits are meant to fit snug, like a second skin — not baggy. A well-fitted suit has no gaps or bagginess at the leg openings, underarms, or seat, since loose fabric drags in the water and slows your swimmer down. Straps and waistbands should stay secure without slipping or rolling, and your swimmer should still have full range of motion for their stroke. Tech suits should fit snugly right out of the package — unlike a practice suit, you don't want to "break one in." The compression fabric actually degrades a little with every wear and wash, so the fewer times it's worn before it matters, the better it performs when it counts. Measure your swimmer and check the brand's sizing chart rather than guessing off their regular clothing size — tech suit sizing runs differently, and ask your coach if you're unsure.

What to Expect as a Swim Family

Year-round swimming is a real commitment — going in with clear eyes makes it a lot more enjoyable for everyone.

Time & Money, Honestly

Practice frequency increases as swimmers move up through groups, and most families attend several meets a season — some requiring overnight travel. Budget for team dues, meet entry fees, travel and lodging, and gear (suits, caps, goggles wear out faster than you'd expect). Costs and time grow with each level, so ask your swimmer's coach directly about current group expectations.

Talking to Your Swimmer After a Race

Lead with "How did that feel?" before "What was your time?" Time will always be there to discuss — but how your swimmer feels about their swim is what carries them through a long season. Let them lead the conversation.

If they want to know what to work on or how they raced strategically, that conversation belongs with their coach, not you. Encourage your swimmer to go ask the coach directly — it builds their own coach relationship and ownership of their swimming, and it keeps feedback coming from the person actually watching their stroke.

Team Communication

Know where team announcements live and check regularly — commitments and schedule changes move fast. Coaches handle training, event selection, and relays.

Coach, Parent, and Board Roles

SMRT's parent board is a booster club — we plan team events, home meets, and occasional community service and fundraising. We don't oversee training or coaching decisions. The clearest way to support your swimmer and your team: let the coach coach. If you have a concern about training, go to the coach directly for a real conversation before escalating.

Understanding Motivational Time Standards

You'll often hear a swim time described by a letter — B, BB, A, AA, AAA, AAAA. These are USA Swimming's motivational time standards: benchmarks showing how a time compares nationally within an age group. They are not automatic qualifying times for a specific meet — always check that meet's own cuts separately.

A note on perspective: these letters describe a moment in time, not a ceiling. Nearly every elite swimmer passed through every one of these levels — including B. Celebrate the letter your swimmer is at now.

• Standards shift with age. A time that's AAA at age 11 may only be A once your swimmer turns 12 — same swim, new age group, different letter. It's not a step backward.
• Standards get updated periodically. USA Swimming republishes these benchmarks periodically (typically after each Olympic cycle), so the exact same swim can earn a different letter after an update than it did before.

What If My Swimmer Doesn't Have a Letter Yet?

If your swimmer is racing an event for the first time, you may see NT (No Time) on the heat sheet instead of a letter. That's completely normal — it just means there's no official time on record yet for that event and course. NT swimmers are typically seeded in the slowest heat, since there's nothing to seed by. The moment they touch the wall, that swim becomes their new baseline, and their first standard follows from there.

Celebrating a New Standard

When your swimmer moves up a letter, that's genuinely worth celebrating — out loud, in the car on the way home, however feels right for your family. Year-round swimming already comes with enough pressure to chase the podium. A best time or a new standard is a personal win regardless of where it lands in the results, and it's the kind of progress that lasts well beyond any one meet. Keep the focus on your swimmer against themselves, not your swimmer against everyone else in the pool.

Swim Lingo Glossary

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Lost & Found?

SMRT's home pool is MLK Aquatic Center, 155 Jackson St, Charleston, SC 29401. Lost & Found is located at the rear of the pool, by the door.

What are Prelims?

The first of two rounds, usually for ages 11 and up. A time in the host team's top group advances your swimmer to a final — usually later that same day or evening.

What are Finals?

If your swimmer qualifies, they race that same event again in a later round.

How do I sign up to volunteer?

Most meets need timers — one or two per lane. Hosted meets need a full team: front desk, hospitality, meet coordinator, and more, across every session. Our kids swim because parents are on the sidelines making it happen — sign-ups go out before each meet we host.

Resources

• USA Swimming — usaswimming.org — the national governing body for the sport.
• South Carolina Swimming (our LSC) — SC Swimming website — state-level meets, time standards, and championship info.