"Congrats! I noticed your son has qualified for Regionals yesterday!"

He said that while still moving to his position, looking back with a friendly smile, waiting for a simple acknowledgement from me.

"What?! Are you serious?!" I replied actually surprised, getting distracted from my duties and inducing him to pause for a moment.

"Yes, he qualified on the 200m breaststroke. You didn't know that?" I didn't know that, and I didn't know how to know that. I called my wife, who was in the galleries, distracted with the warm-up, and shouted "Looks like Leo has qualified for Regionals! Can you check that?!", but she didn't know either. We quickly got together to figure out, searching on the web, and after some struggle decoding time tables, we knew we were looking at the right source. "Leo, we thing you qualified for Regionals yesterday!" We called him right away. "I did?!" He sounded as surprised as we were, which is strange because coaches are the first ones to let them know. "You know what? Talk to your coach. Ask her if she checked your time after your heat."

I had to get back to my position, but I left my cellphone at reach, anxiously waiting for his reply. "Dad, she told me I will be 12 years old when the meet takes place, so the actual time I need is for a 12-year-old, not 11." That felt frustrating, but he still had a drop of 5 secs to celebrate.

After this experience we decided to sit down and definitely learn how these time standards work. And that was not self-explanatory. First, there is no such a thing like one time standard. There are several ones, in different levels and jurisdictions. Age is a criteria to find the time, but meets can follow different rules. Some consider your age on December 31st, others on the race day, and open meets don't consider age at all. It is so tricky that what athletes and parents usually do is to spend some time to find one time, set it as goal, and ignore all the rest until that goal is reached. I wondered if there was a way to simplify that.

That's when we came up with the idea behind Geekswimmers.com. An app that would explain and streamline all numbers around the sport of swimming, starting with time standards.

Let's imagine you are watching your kid in an invitational meet. They just finished swimming an event and you want to know if their time can qualify them for a championship. In GeekSwimmers, complete the Time Benchmark form with the date of birth, gender, course, event, and the time.

Time standards are organized by age, gender, course, and event. We ask for the date of birth, instead of age, because the meets consider the age the swimmer was at a particular date, not the age when the time was taken. So, with the date of birth, we can calculate the age according to the specifications of each meet. That's what we learned when we thought our kid was qualified for Regionals (WOSA), but he would be actually older at the time of the meet, which puts him in a different category.

All fields in the form are required. After submitting the form, the app shows a list of meets that require time standards, sorted by how close the swimmer is from qualifying.

At this point in time, we have data that covers just some meets in Ontario, Canada. They are:

• Western Region SC Championships (WOSA): short course at Canada Games Aquatic Centre in London, for all age groups.

• Western Region LC Championships (WOSA): long course at Windsor International Aquatic and Training Centre, for all age groups.

• Winter Ontario Youth-Junior Championships (OYJ): long course at Markham Pan Am Centre, up to 18 years old, with qualifying times achieved from Sept. 1, 2022 to Feb. 4, 2024.

• Winter Ontario Festival Championships: short course, up to 12 years old, with qualifying times achieved from Sept. 1, 2022 to Feb. 4, 2024.

• Winter Ontario Swimming Championships (OSC): long course, all age groups, with qualifying times achieved from Sept. 1 to Feb. 18, 2024.

• Summer Ontario Youth-Junior Championships (OYJ): long course, up to 18 years old, with qualifying times achieved from Jan. 1, 2023 to Jun. 2, 2024.

• Summer Ontario Festival Championships: long course, up to 12 years old, with qualifying times achieved from Jan 1, 2023 to Jun 2, 2024.

• Summer Ontario Swimming Championships (OSC): long course, all age groups, with qualifying times achieved from Jan 1, 2023 to Jun 2, 2024.

Keep in mind that we cover time and age as qualifying requirements only. These meets may have more requirements though. Please, talk to your swimmer's coach about their potential qualification. We hope the results keep you informed about the meets and goals your swimmer is aiming for. Give it a try and let us know what you think!