Courses & time conversion

Swim times only mean something next to the pool they were swum in. A 100 in a 25-yard pool and a 100 in a 50-meter pool aren't the same race, so a swimmer carries a different best in each. CoachBrighter tracks all three courses separately and converts between them only when it needs to compare — for seeding and for records.

The three courses

• SCY — Short Course Yards, a 25-yard pool. The standard for US high school and college.
• SCM — Short Course Meters, a 25-meter pool.
• LCM — Long Course Meters, a 50-meter pool. This is the Olympic course.

Because the distances and number of walls differ, a time in one course can't be read directly against another. That's what conversion is for.

When conversion happens

You don't convert times by hand. CoachBrighter applies your team's conversion factors automatically in the two places it matters:

• Seeding — when you seed a meet in one course using bests swum in another, so swimmers are placed by true speed rather than by which pool they last raced in.
• Records — when you turn on Include converted times on the records board to rank swims from every course together.

A converted time is always marked with a Conv badge so nobody mistakes it for an actual swim.

Factors, briefly

A conversion factor is just a multiplier: converted time = original time × factor. A factor above 1.0 makes a time slower (yards → meters); below 1.0 makes it faster (meters → yards). New teams start with a sensible default set, and you rarely need to touch them.

When you do need to adjust a multiplier — or seeded times come out unconverted — see Edit conversion factors.