The three types of recognized USA Swimming swims are Sanctioned Events, Approved Competitions and Observed Swim(s). These swims differ greatly and require specific rules and regulations to generate “official” times.

All hosts, directors, saftey directors, marshals, coaches, officials, athletes and clubs must be registered with USA Swimming
The most general type of swim recognized by USA Swimming (USA-S) is a Sanctioned Event. This type of meet must be conducted under USA-S technical and administrative rules. All hosts, directors, safety directors, marshals, coaches, officials, athletes and clubs must be registered with USA-S. To run a Sanctioned Event in Touchpad select an Age Group meet. You will use TouchPad to generate a Meet Registrations Check file to send to your LSC or SWIMS to ensure all athletes are registered USA-S members. This gives you the ease of mind knowing that you are within USA-S guidelines when running your USA-S Sanctioned meet.

Conducted under USA Swimming technical rules and time resolutions
The second type of recognized swim in an Approved Competition. This event requires the meet to be conducted under USA-S technical rules and time resolutions. However, with Approved Competitions there are no requirements for athletes to be members of USA Swimming. All times that are achieved will be recognized by USA-S, but only times recorded by Registered USA-S swimmers will be eligible to be added to the SWIMS database. This means you may want to allow Non-Registered USA-S athletes to swim, such as YMCA or High School/College athletes. This type of meet can easily be run in TouchPad, allowing the host to create a meet as either a High School/College meet (to allow athletes without a birthday or USA-S ID) or as a YMCA meet (to allow athletes without USA-S IDs). With TouchPad it is easy to import, flag, and export results based on swimmer status of Registered or Not USA Registered, making it easy to track and send the correct athlete times to SWIMS.

Conducted outside USA Swimming technical rules such as High School, NCAA, YMCA or IPC
The last type of recognized swim is an Observed Swim. This meet type is conducted outside USA-S technical rules, be it a High School, NCAA, YMCA or IPC meet. There are no requirements for membership with USA-S for athlete participation. In order for this type of meet to be observed by USA Swimming there must be a request made to the LSC within its parameters for observation. Only times from approved and observed swims by USA-S with appointed and certified officials will be recognized. Also, only times achieved by USA-S registered members will be eligible for the SWIMS database. These types of meets can easily be run in TouchPad, allowing the hosts to create a meet as either a High School/College meet (to allow athletes without a birthday or USA-S ID) or as a YMCA meet (to allow athletes without USA-S IDs). With TouchPad it is simple for times and events to be easily exported and sent to SWIMS.

As usual, our tight integration with SwimOffice allows teams to designate any swimmer as not registered with USA Swimming. This designation automatically transfers to TouchPad when syncing meet entries.

Download more information on Sanctioned, Approved or Observed swims by USA Swimming.

Note: Teams that have their own swimmer IDs that are not USA Swimming IDs will need to be manually flagged as Not USA Registered in TouchPad, or better yet, flagged as such in SwimOffice if the team uses that.