Course Conversion

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Most national and international swim organizations do not recognize or support course conversions. How to convert a Yard time to a Long Course Meter time could be argued by many coaches, parents, and officials. That's why in many meets, non-conforming times are seeded last. For example, if the meet is a LCM meet, anyone entering with a qualifying Yard or SC Meter time is seeded after the swimmers that entered the meet with a LC Meter time.

In the real day-to-day trenches, many of us have to deal with course conversions. TM provides an easy way for you to customize your particular organization's Age Group course conversion factors or to use the official course conversions published by the NCAA (for Colleges) and the NFHS (for High Schools). Pick either the Age Group, High School, or College tab and then click on the Select button and TM will use those particular conversion factors when you specify conversion.

Age Group Course Conversions
TM provides a set of default conversion factors which you may choose to use. These factors are no more valid than any others, but are provided as a starting point. From the Main Menu Bar, click with your mouse on Set-up / Course Conversion then click on the Age Group tab to review or change any of these default settings.


Yards to/from SC Meters
The default factor for converting Yards to and from SC Meters is provided as 1.11.

SC Meters to/from LC Meters
There are two ways to convert SCM to/from LCM times - by a assigning a value to each turn or by using a straight conversion factor.

Turn Value in Seconds

Free    .8 per Turn

Back    .6 per Turn

Breast    1.0 per Turn

Fly       .7 per Turn

IM       .8 per Turn

Straight Factor

You can use a Straight conversion factor from SCM to LCM, regardless of the stroke. Some swim organizations use .02 or 2% for this factor.

Long Distance (LD) Conversion Yards to/from Meters
    500 Yards to/from 400 Meters factor    .875
   1000 Yards to/from 800 Meters factor    .875
   1650 Yards to/from 1500 Meters factor   1.006      

These factors apply when you convert Long Distance times from Yards to/from SC Meters. Together with either the Straight Factor or the Turn Factors, they also apply when converting times from Yards to/from LC Meters.

If you use turn factors, the difference in the number of turns between 400/500, 800/1000, and 1500/1650 is critical. For example, in the 800 Meters, there are 15 turns for LCM, 31 turns for SCM, and 39 turns for the 1000 Yards. So using .8 seconds per turn and converting a 800 LCM time to a 1000 Yard time, you would subtract 24 turns times .8 seconds per turn and then divide the LCM time by .875.

   For example, a 11:40.89 800 LCM time converts to a 12:59.07 1000 Yard time.


NCAA (College)
Click on Set-up / Course Conversion and then on the College tab to display the official NCAA Conversion factors.

NFHS (High School)
Click on Set-up / Course Conversion and then on the High School tab to display the official NFHS Conversion factors.