The Plantations Piranhas

Each Piranha family should volunteer for at least four A or B meets during the season. Stroke and Turn Judge, Referee and Starter positions require MCSL certification. The other jobs (Timers, Clerks of Course, Runners, Concessions and pool Set-Up and Clean-up crew) do not require any experience.  Some volunteer roles are available for teens to sign up for SSL hours. Besides ensuring smooth operations at team events, volunteering at the meets is a fun way to be more involved in the action and a great opportunity to get to know the other swim families.

Please refer to the team donations on the main page for the 2025 Summer Season.

Clerk of Course:  

The home and visiting team clerks work with the announcer to control the flow of swimmers to the clerk’s table.  The clerks identify the swimmers, tell them their lanes, and assign them to wait in a designated area until it is time for them to report to the starting area.

Timers:

Timers must be attentive and follow the head timer’s instructions. Each lane will have one timer designated as the “recorder”. For each heat, this person is assigned to write down the times obtained by each of that lane’s three timers. These times should be listed on the timer sheet in a consistent order for each successive heat. The middle time of the three, or any two matching times, shall be circled, and that is the official time. 

Announcer:

The meet announcer is in charge of any warm-up announcements and relaying other pertinent meet information as directed by the team rep.  The announcer also announces half-time and final scores, all-star qualifying times and pool/team records.

Scorers/Automation: 

Four people sit in the scoring area: the scorer (visiting team), the computer operator (home team) and two verifiers (one from each team).

The scorer receives the timer sheets from the runner and verifies their completeness.

The computer operator types the times into the computer and operates the program during the meet.

The verifiers read the times to the computer operator and/or check the results printed from the computer after each event against the timer sheets to be sure the data was entered accurately. 

The computer operator prints labels, along with event results (if desired), for the volunteers at the awards table. Throughout the meet, someone from the automation team periodically posts paper copies of the event results in a designated area, for viewing by all teams. If a team or pool record is broken and there are any all-star qualifying times, an automation volunteer reports the information to the announcer so that it can be announced.

Runners:

Runners take the completed time sheets from the head timer and DQs from the referee to the automation volunteers in the scoring area. While they don’t really have to “run”, this is a job that requires the volunteer(s) to be standing and moving back and forth, sometimes quickly, and this is something volunteers should take into consideration, during hot weather especially.

Ribbons/Awards:

The awards table consists of two ribbon writers, one from each team.  The ribbon writers affix the ribbon labels to the ribbons and divide the ribbons by team for coaches to pick up at the end of the meet.