Each year we publish a calendar of meets for the coming season that we are attending as a club. A few of the dates of the meets in May-July 2009 are yet to be finally confirmed but they should give you an indication of the likely dates.

The list shows you the age groups for which the meet is valid, the events that will be available to the swimmers and whether they will take place in a 25m short course, or a 50m long course pool.

We would ask you to take a little time to consider this and to

Plan out your swimming season.

1. Think about which are your target meets for the year - Yorkshires? North Easterns? Nationals? Make sure that you will be available to attend those meets if you achieve the qualifying times!

2. Think about how you are going to achieve those qualifying times! Whilst you can enter the Yorkshires with ‘non-licenced’ times (i.e. time trials, B&D, A&W etc), to enter North Eastern’s and Nationals you must have achieved the time at a licenced meet (i.e. one of those on the list) and for the long distance Nationals events (800 & 1500m free) you must have achieved them in a 50m pool. So in order to get those times, you need to have swum those events at one of the licenced meets.

3. Plan Ahead! If you have a Target Meet, for example, at the beginning of May, entries for that will probably close by the beginning of April (to allow the Meet Organisers time to process the entries), so you need to make sure that you have swum that event at least a couple of times before the end of March and entries for those will need to have been in by January!

4. Include a Contingency! Make sure that you enter enough meets to cover for problems. It is a sad fact of life that you will sometimes have your entry rejected. It might be that there were a lot of people entering and yours was one of the slowest times, it might be that the meet was full by the time our entry came in. There might be a meet that you were relying on for a time, only to go down with flu the day before..... There are so many reasons that you need to make sure that you enter enough meets - you never know - you might even get an even better time at that one!

5. Check with your coach to make sure they are happy with your selections

6. Do the Training - make sure that you attend as many training sessions as you can and do not miss vital training periods with holidays etc!