What are LASACATs

LASACAT stands for Leicestershire & Rutland Amateur Swimmers Association Categories.

LASACAT events are designed to encourage swimmers to compete over a wide range of events, with each swim earning points based on time achieved, distance, stroke, age and gender.

The points from each swim are accumulated to arrive at the overall LASACAT total and these totals are used to rank the swimmers in the overall Championship.

There are 5 Categories of Events that make up a LASACAT competition:

• Sprint
• Form
• 100s
• Distance
• Individual Medley

To gain the maximum points you must swim an event from each category.

At County Level, these events are (mostly) swum in 25m pools and include 50m events to give swimmers the opportunity to use all the same skills of starting, turning and finishing as in a 2 length swim in a 50m pool, together with distance events requiring more endurance. The results of the event are determined on heat declared winner (HDW) basis i.e. results from all heats are ordered and ranked in time order, fastest first; there are no finals.

The youngest age groups will not swim 100m events as part of the County LASACAT programme, as most swimmers at this level do not have the physiological development required to swim this event correctly.

Sprints
any stoke over 50

Form
Breaststroke, Backstroke or Butterfly over 200

100s
any stroke over 100m
age constraints may apply

Distance
Freestyle over 200/400/800/1500m
age & gender constraints may apply

Individual Medley
over 100/200/400m
age constraints may apply

You are encouraged to enter and swim in more than one event in each category as ‘insurance’ against a disqualification or illness. Where more than one event in a category is swum the best points score is used.

BAGCAT points are based on the upper and starting points from the FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) points table and are adjusted for the lower age groups. These enable comparison between swimmers of similar age and are used to determine rankings.  Results recorded and published using specialised meet management software will always report the points for a swim, in brackets, after the time.

Further details can be found on the ASA website www.britishswimming.org.