Knowledge Base — Swimmers (and Parents)

Article 1

Getting started: create your account and link your swimmer

Applies to: swimmers, and parents/guardians
Where: /register, then /swimmer

Your times are already on MeetDirector as soon as a meet's results are uploaded — you don't create them. What you do is link your account to your swimmer record so you can track progress, set goals and keep a journal.

Step 1 — Create your account

1. Go to meetdirector.online → Create an account.
2. Enter your name, email and a password. (Phone number is optional — it only helps us verify it's you if you ever need to recover the account.)
3. Verify your email address from the link we send you, then sign in.

Step 2 — Find your swimmer

1. Go to My swimming (/swimmer).
2. In Find your swimmer, enter the swimmer's last name, and their USA-S # and/or date of birth. The extra identifiers are what prove the record is yours, so give at least one of them.
3. Click Search. Matching swimmers appear under Matches, with team, birth year and USA-S # so you can pick the right one.

Step 3 — Link the record

On the matching row, choose how you're linking:

• This is me — you are the swimmer.
• I'm their parent/guardian — you're linking your child's record.

If the swimmer is under 18 and is linking their own account, a parent/guardian name and email are required — we email the parent so they know the account exists.

Tick the consent checkbox ("I'm this swimmer or their parent/guardian, and I consent to linking this account to these results"), then click Link this swimmer.

The swimmer now appears under My swimmers with links to My times and Goals & journal. A parent's row is tagged parent/guardian. Both a swimmer and their parent can be linked to the same record at the same time.

If your swimmer appears more than once

Swimmers routinely exist as several records — club, high school, unattached — and each one holds only part of their times. If MeetDirector spots that, it asks "Is this the same swimmer?" on your page. Confirm and the records are combined in your view, and an administrator reviews whether to merge them permanently. Nothing is merged silently: only your family knows whether two same-named records are one person.

Other things you can do here

• Unlink — removes the link between your account and a swimmer record. Your times are not deleted.
• Parent/guardian access — from your swimmer's page you can send an invitation to a parent by email so they can link to the record too.

Privacy

• Your USA-S number and date of birth are never shown publicly — age is.
• Goals and journals are not public. They reach parents and coaches only if you share them (see Who can see what).
• Your club's roster isn't public either. You can see your teammates' names once your swimmer is linked; nobody outside the club can.

Article 2

Viewing your times and results

Applies to: linked swimmers and parents
Where: My swimming → My times, or /athletes/{id}

Your times

Click My times next to your swimmer on the My swimming page. Your profile shows:

• Best times — your fastest time in each event and course.
• Event times — every swim for an event, so you can see progression, plus split comparison between two of your swims.
• Results — a full list of every swim, meet by meet.

Results are listed in order: swims that count (by place/time) first, then DQ, then SCR, with NS last.

Progression over time

From your swimmer's page, click Progression (/swimmer/athlete/{id}/progress) and pick an event to see your times charted over time.

Course conversion

Times can be shown converted between courses (SCY / SCM / LCM). Converted times are always labelled with a badge showing the original course, so you can tell a real swim from a converted one.

Finding a meet

Find a meet sits on the front page, and the same search is on the Meets page (/meets).

1. Type what you know in the search box — the meet name, the host club (name or code), the pool, or a town, state or ZIP. One box covers all of them.
2. Narrow it with Course (SCY / SCM / LCM) if you want.
3. Choose Upcoming, Past or All, then Search.

The results page lists each meet with its host, dates, location, course and status — click one for its Results, Heat sheet and Standings.

• The front page also shows the next few meets without searching; See all opens the full list.
• A meet counts as upcoming until the day it finishes, so a meet being swum today still shows.
• If nothing is scheduled, the page shows the most recent meets instead and says so.
• Searching a town or ZIP only finds meets whose host filled in the location — older meets imported from results files show Location TBC, so search those by name or club.

Your team's page

Teams lists every club, and each has a page showing where it swims — governing body, league, classification — plus its address, phone, website and logo where the club has filled them in, and its coaching staff.

Once your swimmer is linked, you also see your team's roster: your teammates' names, gender and age. That's all — no USA-S numbers and no links to anyone's times, because another family's swims are theirs, not yours. Your own swimmer's times stay where they've always been, under My times.

Nobody outside the club sees the roster at all. Somebody who is simply signed in sees the same public page a stranger does.

Meet results and rankings

• Meets (/meets) — open any meet for full Results, Heat sheet and Standings.
• Rankings (/rankings) — live rankings, including an Advanced view with course conversion and combined age groups.
• Swimmer of the Week (/sotw).

A time is missing or wrong

Times come from the meet's results file, uploaded by the host or timing company. If a swim is missing or attached to the wrong swimmer, it's usually a matching problem — the record didn't carry a date of birth or USA-S number. Ask your coach to check your roster details first; if it still doesn't appear, open a support ticket with the meet name, date and event.

Article 3

Setting goals

Applies to: linked swimmers and parents
Where: My swimming → Goals & journal → Set a goal

Adding a goal

1. Open Goals & journal for your swimmer, then click Set a goal.
2. Pick the Course (SCY / SCM / LCM), Stroke and Distance.
3. Your recent times for that event appear on the right — a chart, your best time and the last 12 months of swims — so you can pick a realistic target. Tick Include converted times from other courses if you want conversions counted too.
4. Enter your Target time. Type it as digits and it formats itself: 12345 becomes 1:23.45. Both 1:02.34 and 27.50 work.
5. Add an optional Note — e.g. "Sectionals cut".
6. Click Save goal.

Tracking goals

Your goals are listed on the Goals & journal page with Event, Course, Target, Best and Gap — how far you are from the target. When you hit it, the gap turns green.

Goals update automatically as new results are imported; there's nothing to re-enter after a meet.

Click Remove to delete a goal.

Who can see your goals

Goals are private by default. They reach parents and coaches only through a share you create — see Who can see what on your swimmer's page. If the swimmer is under 18, a share that reaches outside the family needs a guardian's emailed confirmation code.

Article 4

Using your journal

Applies to: linked swimmers and parents
Where: My swimming → Goals & journal

The journal is a private training log — how a session or a meet went, and how you felt about it.

Writing an entry

On the Goals & journal page, scroll to Journal and fill in:

• Date — defaults to today.
• Title — optional.
• Mood — 😀 Great / 🙂 Good / 😐 OK / 🙁 Off / 😣 Rough (optional).
• Body — "How did training/the meet go?"

Click Add entry. Entries are listed newest first with the date, mood and title.

Privacy

• Your journal is private unless you share it. The card header tells you which it is.
• Parents and swimmers each keep their own entries. If your swimmer hasn't shared their journal with you, you'll see a note saying so — entries you write still appear and stay yours.
• Entries someone else wrote on the same swimmer are marked swimmer's entry and can't be deleted by you.
• To change who sees the journal, use Sharing → Who can see what on the swimmer's page. Sharing is per-person and can be withdrawn at any time.

Deleting and restoring

• Click delete on your own entry to remove it.
• Deleted entries move to Recently deleted, where they stay for 30 days — each shows the exact date it will be destroyed and how many days are left. Click restore to bring one back, or purge it immediately.
• Nobody else can see entries in Recently deleted, and after 30 days they're permanently destroyed.

Article 5

College coaches who want to connect

Applies to: linked swimmers and parents
Where: My swimming → your swimmer → Sharing → Recruiting tab

College coaches registered on MeetDirector can search published results and ask to connect with a swimmer. Every coach is checked by MeetDirector against their school's staff directory before they can search or send anything.

When a coach asks to connect

The request appears at the top of the Recruiting tab under College coaches who'd like to connect, with the school, division, team, the coach's name, title and contact details, and their note. The swimmer and every parent on file can see it, and parents are emailed a copy. Nothing about the swimmer has been shared with the coach.

Answering a request

• Share my profile — the coach can see best times and meet history (and your goals, if the swimmer ticks include my goals), and you can message each other on the site. Parents can read every message. The school is added to your recruiting list, where you can withdraw the share at any time.
• If the swimmer is under 18, a parent is emailed a code and must approve the share before anything reaches the coach. If we have no date of birth for the swimmer, a parent needs to answer from their own account.
• No thanks — closes the request. The coach isn't told why, and that school can't send another.

Graduation year and turning off college contact

Under College recruiting preferences you can set the swimmer's high-school graduation year. NCAA Division I coaches may only make contact from June 15 after the swimmer's sophomore year, so they need it; if it's blank, MeetDirector uses the class shown in the swimmer's latest high-school meet results.

Switch off Let verified college coaches find … and ask to connect to leave the swimmer out of college coaches' searches. No new requests arrive and any still waiting are closed. You can still send a profile to a school yourself.

Article 6

Getting help — submitting a support ticket

Open a ticket at:

➡ support.meetdirector.online

How to submit a ticket

1. Go to support.meetdirector.online.
2. Sign in (or create a support account) using the same email address as your MeetDirector account — it lets us find your swimmer straight away.
3. Click Submit a ticket, choose the topic, and describe what's happening.
4. Submit. You'll get a confirmation email, and replies arrive by email — reply to that email to add to the same ticket.

What to include

• Your account email.
• Your swimmer's name and team.
• The page URL where the problem happened (e.g. /swimmer).
• What you expected, what actually happened, and the exact error message or a screenshot.
• For a missing or wrong time: the meet name, date and event.

Common swimmer and parent questions to raise as tickets

• I can't find my swimmer in the search on My swimming.
• My swimmer shows up as two separate records and I'd like them merged.
• A time is missing, wrong, or on the wrong swimmer.
• I need my name hidden from public pages.
• I never received the email verification or parent invitation email (check your junk mail first).
• I can't sign in / need a password reset (try Forgot password at /forgot-password first).