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A Masters meet is always a Timed Finals meet in which athletes from ages 18 and older compete in 5 year age groups. Here is a list of some of those age groups: 18-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, ... Relay Teams can also compete in age groups either based on the age of the youngest athlete for Yard meets or the total age of the 4 athletes for Meter meets.
Please follow these steps to set up a Masters meet:
| 1. | In the Meet Setup, click on the Masters radio button for the meet Class. Go to Meet Set-up, Athlete/ Relay Preferences and note the Age-Up-Date and be sure it is the last day of the meet if short course yards and 12/31/xxxx where "xxxx" is the year of the meet if the course is in meters. |
| 2. | Click on Set-up from the Main Menu Bar and then Seeding Preferences. If you are running a Championship style Masters meets in which some events are going to be seeded by age then time, then click on the "Seed by Age Group" radio button. Also specify the number of age groups to skip before a residual heat is added. Please note that the algorithm for seeding by age group and time is defined by the Championship Committee of United States Masters Swimming. |
| 3. | When setting up events, specify the age of the event as Open and MM will automatically configure the standard Masters Individual or Relay age groups for the event. Specify if you wish to swim "2 to a lane" for the Long Distance events. You can either "require" all athletes entering that event to swim 2 to a Lane or you can let them "choose" if they wish to swim in the early heats as 2 to a lane or swim in the later heats in the standard one to a lane. |
| 4. | When you key in the Athletes and their entries, make sure that you click on the "2 to a lane" column if appropriate or enter an "*" as a Special Character to indicate a 6th event, again if appropriate. In many Masters meets, if an athlete is going to swim in 6 events, he/she is asked to indicate their scratch preference if the meet becomes too large and scratches must be made. |
| 5. | When you enter Relays, you will be asked to declare the Age Grouping of the Relay. The age grouping for a Yard meet is based on the age of the youngest swimmer, and for a Meter meet, the age is based on the sum of the ages of the 4 swimmers in the relay. |
| 6. | When seeding, there are two ways to seed: |
•By Time •By Age then by Time
Click on Seeding from the Main Menu Bar and select all the events that will be seeded by Time only and check the By Time button at the bottom. Then click the Start Seeding button. When that is completed, click the By Age then by Time button, select the events to be seed this way and click the Start Seeding button. For Deck Seeded events, you might want to click on Multi-Age Split check box and MM will rank each age group separately.
| 7. | If you are grouping Team Scoring competition by the size of the teams, be sure to click on Set-up then Entry/Scoring Preferences and then click on the Masters Team Scoring button on the bottom right of the menu to declare the scoring categories based on the team size. You can also click on the Division / Region Names then Region button. Now enter names for your Team Groups. For example, you may want to set up the Region Names as Small, Medium, and Large and specify the minimum number of athletes for each scoring group for Female, Male, and Combined. That way when you go to run Team Scoring, click on the "by region" radio button and MM will group the teams according to your specifications. |
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