What
do "SCY" and "LCM" stand for?
The abbreviations
SCY, and LCM stand for Short Course Yards and Long Course Meters,
respectively. A Short Course Yards venue is 25 yards long, while a
Long Course venue is 50 meters long. Generally, fall, winter and spring
meets are held in SCY venues, while many summer events take place
in LCM venues.
How
do I figure out what my SCM time converts to in LCM or vice versa?
The answer
to this question seems pure and simple on the surface, but there
are many things to consider. Imagine taking your present short course
pool and making it 20 yards instead of 25 yards. Now imagine a race
in the 100-yard freestyle or the 200-yard freestyle. Who is going
to perform better? The answer is, the swimmer with the better turns
(maybe).
Now,
imagine a pool that is 50 yards long, and races conducted in that
pool (still measured in yards). Are some swimmers going to have
more advantage than others? Also, for the sake of comparison, let's
say swimmer "A" trains at least 9 months out of the year in the
50 yard pool and swimmer "B" trains in the 20 yard pool. Will there
be a change in stroke technique between the swimmers? It is very
dangerous for us to give our swimmer's a false sense of either accomplishment,
or, lack of confidence based on a comparison of short course to
long course meters.
The
bottom line is someone is going to have a completely different performance
and there is no reliable way to make the comparison. Let's accept
the fact that international events are conducted in 50-meter pools
and our country conducts most meets in 25-yard pools.
For
pools of the same course (short or long) it's pretty accurate to
use the British/metric conversion factor. There are 39.37 inches
in a meter, (or 2.54 cm in an inch) and you can thus multiply or
divide by 39.37/36.0 or 1.094. Note that converting between long
and short course is not so simple and is only done for estimation
purposes. Further, USS does not define or accept converted times
for any purpose. Meets at higher levels often post cut times for
the nonconforming courses.
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