Many new swimmers have been asking about how the ribbons work!!  Here’s a little explanation:

 For every individual event, ribbons are given for 1^st through 6^th places by the home team.  Our team also chooses to give participant ribbons for individual events swam by ages 12 and under (if you’re not disqualified).

 Scoring for the team is as follows:

 1^st place – 7 points

2^nd place – 5 points

3^rd place – 4 points

4^th place – 3 points

5^th place – 2 points

6^th place – 1 points

 For relays, ribbons are given for 1^st and 2^nd place only.  No participant ribbons are given for relays.  If a team places first and second in a relay, then no points are awarded for 2^nd place to either team.  Ribbons are awarded to the 1^st and 2^nd place finishing team regardless of points.

 Scoring for the team for relays is as follows:

 1^st place – 7 points

2^nd place – 5 points

 Heat winner ribbons/beads/bracelets are optional and supplied by the home team so not everywhere we go will have them.  Most teams do provide, but Edgewater did not at our first meet.  For our home meets, we always provide heat winner ribbons/beads/bracelets to each heat winner in every individual event/relay.  The kids get excited about winning their heat! 

 Our team also chooses to have time improvement ribbons (TI) for each swimmer when they improve their time in an individual event.  For example, your child swims the 25 free in 28 seconds in the first meet, and then 27.5 seconds in the second meet.  They would get a TI ribbon showing their time improvement by 0.5 seconds!  You may swim one event in meet one, and then not again until meet 4.  You still would get a TI ribbon if you beat your last time in that particular event.  However, if you swim 3 individual events one week, and then 3 different individual events the second week, you wouldn’t be able to get a TI ribbon until the third week when you would swim some of the same events again!  It’s awesome to see how the kids improve their times by the end of the season!  It’s all about just improving your time even by a millisecond every week!

 Jenna has some great ribbon books for sale where you can organize your ribbons for the season!  Be sure to check them out!

 Regarding the ribbons, mistakes do occur, especially when we’re at an away meet and the other team is responsible for printing out ribbon labels for us.  If your swimmer didn’t get a ribbon and they should have, please let us know and we’ll get your child their well deserved ribbon!  Remember that ribbons can’t be completed until the end of the meet, which is pretty late, and they must be ready by MMM at 9:00 on Friday morning, so errors may happen but should be rare hopefully!