Allowing Aged-Out Athletes to Register and Compete

Many teams could not compete in 2020, which means those athletes at the top of the max age restriction completely missed out on their last season! To make up for this unfortunate circumstance, many teams want to give their aged-out athletes a final swim season redo.

Or maybe you just want to up your age-limit in general...

Below are the configurations and considerations required to allow these athletes to register, be included in age group communication and compete. If you have questions after reviewing this information, contact our Customer Happiness Team.

Covered in this Article:

• Registration Configuration
• Athlete Age Groups and/or Athlete Roster Groups
• Meet Events and Age-Up Dates

Registration Configuration

All you need to do is change the Age Restriction Maximum on the registration form to the new max, or don't enforce an age limit, if applicable to your team.

➞ See Registration Form: Main Section

Athlete Age Groups and/or Athlete Roster Groups

This step is really optional depending on how you use the system.

The Athlete Age Group only affects the age group labels/badges shown in the People page next to athlete names (shown above), AND whether or not these athletes would be reachable if you wanted to send an email directly to this age group. ➞ See Athlete Age Groups and Communications: Emails and Alerts for more on these topics.

The Athlete Roster Group comes into play if you use this feature to separate athletes into categories during registration or manually in their profiles. ➞ See Athlete Roster Groups for more on this topic.

➧ What happens if I don't make changes?

If you don't have an Athlete Age Group or Athlete Roster Group (if using) defined (under Settings) that includes 19 year olds, then as described above, the athlete will not be assigned to an Athlete Age Group upon registration, so no label will display next to their name in People, and they will not be included if you were to directly email this age group (usually only useful for school teams).

And if using the Athlete Roster Groups, then it may seem odd for a 19yo to be placed in a 15-18 group, but again, this depends on if and how your team uses this feature.

➧ What if I want to make a change?

We suggest you edit the "15-18" group to be "15 & Over" in your Athlete Age Groups and/or Athlete Roster Groups under Manage Team > Settings.

» Note: Making these changes has no bearing on the ability for them to compete. That part is discussed next. 

Meet Events and Age-Up Dates

➧ Meet Events

The main issue is the age ranges on your meet events. Events have to match when you are merging your events for a meet with another team. If other teams in your league do not also make a change to allow for a 19 year old athlete, then it won't work for you to just make changes in your SwimTopia meet.

The best solution is for everyone swimming together to agree in advance to the age ranges they are going to use in their meet before making any changes, and then update your events as such. 

So, if there is an event in the meet that accepts 19 year old entries, and your registration form accepts 19 year old athletes, that athlete would be able to register and enter the meet.

➞ See Meet Setup: Events

➧ Age Up Dates

Make sure your Age Up Dates won't be an issue for any of these 19 year olds. If they were born after that date, they could be seen as 20. There's a Season Age Up Date (set in Season section), and a Meet Age Up Date (set on the meet and takes precedence if different from the season date).

➞ See Age-up Dates

➧ Alternate Option for Hy-Tek Meet Manager Users:

If your team is running your meet in Meet Manager, you could manually add the athletes to the events there as noted below. In Hy-Tek, if you select "All Events" instead of the default "Eligible Only" it will let you enter any athlete in any event, regardless of age or competition category. 

Then when you upload your results into your SwimTopia meet, the system will recognize the events that do not already exist in the meet, will ask if you want to add them, and then when you agree, the events will be created so the results can load in the meet and athlete profiles as usual.

➞ See our Setup Considerations - Previous Season Canceled or Virtual article if you would like guidance on setting up for the season.