Marshalling swimmers
Get the next few heats sitting in lane order, so the starter never has to wait for anyone.
First time? 3 things worth knowing
- You don't need a passcode.
- Heat sheets are visible to everyone. Just open Swim Club Connect the same way you do to enter your swimmer in a race.
- The heat sheets screen keeps itself up to date.
- As each heat is run, the sheet moves on by itself. There's nothing to refresh and nothing to tap between heats.
- Charge your phone.
- An hour of screen-on time adds up.
Open the heat sheets
Open your meet, then tap HEAT SHEETS at the top of the Meet Details page.
No role change needed. This is the same view every parent has. Race starters and club admins switch roles; marshals don't.
Read a heat
Each heat lists every lane in order, top to bottom. That order is the order you seat people in.
- 1, 2, 3…
- The lane number. This is what you're organising by.
- Harris, Lucy
- The swimmer, surname first.
- F6 M7
- Gender and age — F6 is a six-year-old girl, M7 a seven-year-old boy. Useful when two swimmers share a surname.
- YWDSC
- The swimmer's club. At a club night everyone's the same; at an inter-club meet this is what tells two similar names apart.
- 28.04
- Their seed time — the time they're expected to swim. You don't need it, but it's why the heat is ordered the way it is.
- Empty lane
- Nobody is swimming in that lane. Leave the seat empty and keep the rest in order — don't shuffle people up.
Follow the meet as it runs
The heat being swum right now is shaded green with a green dot beside it. When that heat finishes, the shading moves to the next one on its own.
If you've scrolled away and lost your place, tap Jump to Current and the screen goes straight back to the heat in the water.
You'll scroll constantly.
Marshalling means looking ahead, so you'll spend most of the meet a few heats further down the list than the race is. Jump to Current is how you get back without hunting.
Seat two or three heats ahead
The usual method, and the reason marshalling works: set out a row of seats per heat, and fill three rows at a time.
- Front row is the heat about to swim.
- Second and third rows are the two heats after it.
- Within each row, seat swimmers left to right in lane order — lane 1 first, then 2, then 3, leaving a gap wherever the sheet says Empty lane.
When a heat finishes, send the front row to the blocks, move everyone forward a row, and fill the empty back row from the sheet. Then repeat, all meet.
Things that happen
None of these are your fault, and all of them have an answer.
- A swimmer isn't there when you call them
- Don't hold the heat up. Leave their lane empty, seat the rest in order, and let the race starter know a lane will be unused. The meet keeps moving and nobody else is delayed.
- A swimmer vanishes from a heat you'd already seated
- Their parent has withdrawn the nomination. The sheet is correct — your row is stale — so glance at the screen before you send a row up. This can only happen while nominations are open; if it's disrupting your marshalling, ask your club admin to close them once the meet starts.
- A lane says Empty lane
- Nothing is wrong — nobody nominated for it. Leave the seat empty so the rest of the row still matches the lane numbers.
- You've lost track of which heat is running
- Tap Jump to Current — the green shading is always on the heat in the water. For a bird's-eye view of the whole meet, toggle to Program View for a simple list of the events, where a dot shows the event's status: amber still to come, green under way, blue finished.
That's it
Two or three rows ahead, in lane order, and the starter never waits. It's the least technical job on the deck and the one that keeps the meet on time.
Curious what happens after the swimmers reach the blocks? Starting races and Keeping time cover the other two deck jobs.