You just got an email from your kid's swim team with a PDF attached called something like "2026 Spring Invitational Heat Sheet." You open it, and it's 47 pages of tiny text, abbreviations, and numbers that look like they were formatted for an accountant, not a parent. Don't worry — you're not the only one staring at it with no idea what you're reading.
Heat sheets look intimidating, but once you understand the layout, they're actually pretty straightforward. Here's everything you need to know to find your swimmer and figure out when they're racing.
What Is a Heat Sheet?
A heat sheet is the official lineup for a swim meet. It tells you which swimmers are in which events, which heat they're swimming in, which lane they've been assigned, and what their seed time is. Think of it like a program for a play, except instead of actors, it's kids in swimsuits.
You'll sometimes hear the term "psych sheet" thrown around too. A psych sheet comes out before the heat sheet and lists all the entered swimmers ranked by seed time, but it doesn't have heat or lane assignments yet. The heat sheet is the final version — it's what the meet will actually follow.
Breaking Down the Layout
Every heat sheet is a little different depending on the software the meet uses, but they all contain the same core information. Here's what you're looking at:
Event Number and Description
At the top of each section, you'll see something like:
Event 23 — Girls 9-10 50 Yard Freestyle
This tells you:
- Event 23 — The event number. This is the single most important number for your swimmer. Events run in order, so if your kid is in event 23, they swim after event 22.
- Girls — The gender for this event.
- 9-10 — The age group. Swimmers are grouped by age, usually 8 & Under, 9-10, 11-12, 13-14, and 15 & Over (sometimes called Senior).
- 50 Yard — The distance. This means two lengths of a 25-yard pool, or one length of a 50-meter pool.
- Freestyle — The stroke. The four competitive strokes are freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. You'll also see Individual Medley (IM), where the swimmer does all four strokes in one race.
Heats
Under each event, you'll see heats numbered starting from 1. If 40 kids are entered in an event and the pool has 6 lanes, that's 7 heats (6 swimmers per heat, with 4 in the last one).
Heats are typically seeded slowest to fastest. That means Heat 1 has the swimmers with the slowest seed times, and the last heat has the fastest. Don't take it personally if your kid is in Heat 1 — they've got to start somewhere, and it means they have a great shot at dropping time and moving up.
Lane Assignments
Within each heat, swimmers are assigned lanes. You'll see a column with numbers 1 through however many lanes the pool has (usually 6 or 8).
Lanes are assigned using a "circle seed" pattern, which means the fastest swimmer in each heat gets a center lane, and slower swimmers are placed in the outside lanes. This isn't something you need to worry about — just know which lane number belongs to your kid so you can watch the right spot.
Seed Times
The seed time is the swimmer's best known time for that event going into the meet. It's the time that was used to place them into their heat and lane. You'll see it listed as something like 45.32 (seconds) or 1:23.45 (minutes and seconds).
If your swimmer has never swum an event in competition before, you'll see NT next to their name. That stands for "No Time," and it just means they don't have an official recorded time yet. NT swimmers are usually placed in the earliest heats.
The Name and Team Columns
Pretty self-explanatory — the swimmer's name and which team or club they represent. Names are usually listed as Last, First.
How Events Are Organized
Events at a swim meet follow a fairly standard order, though it varies by meet. Here's the general pattern:
- By gender: Girls and boys alternate, or all girls events run first followed by all boys (or vice versa).
- By age group: Younger swimmers usually go first within each stroke grouping.
- By stroke: The typical order is Individual Medley, Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly — but this isn't universal.
- Relays: Relay events (where four swimmers race together as a team) are usually placed at the beginning or end of a session.
Most meets also have a break between sessions. A morning session might cover 12 & Under events, and an afternoon session covers 13 & Over. Check the meet information sheet (usually sent alongside the heat sheet) for session times.
Finding Your Swimmer
Here's where things get tedious. Your kid might be in 3, 4, or more events spread across a 47-page document. You've got to scan through every relevant age group and stroke to find their name.
Some parents use the old "Ctrl+F" trick if they're reading the PDF on a computer. Others print it out and go page by page with a highlighter. Both work, but neither is fun.
SwimDeets was built for exactly this situation — you upload your heat sheet PDF, pick your swimmers, and it highlights all their entries and builds a timeline so you know exactly when they're up. It saves a lot of squinting.
A Few More Things You'll See
- Exhibition (EX): Some swimmers may be marked as exhibition, meaning they swim the event but their time doesn't count for official scoring. This is common when a swimmer is entered in more events than the meet allows for scoring.
- Bonus: Similar to exhibition — the swimmer races but doesn't score team points.
- SCY / LCM: These abbreviations refer to the pool size. SCY is Short Course Yards (25-yard pool), LCM is Long Course Meters (50-meter pool), and SCM is Short Course Meters (25-meter pool). Seed times from different course types aren't directly comparable.
- Prelims and Finals: Bigger meets have preliminary heats in the morning, and the top swimmers come back for finals in the evening. Your heat sheet might be labeled "Prelims" or "Finals."
The Bottom Line
A heat sheet is really just a big schedule with lane assignments. Once you know your swimmer's event numbers, heat, and lane, you've got everything you need to know when to look up from your camp chair and cheer.
And if you're feeling generous, help the confused-looking parent next to you read theirs too. We've all been there.