The SwimmerID

Making sure we've properly identified each swimmer is the toughest job in the management of our archives. The Top Ten process only gives us name and age of the swimmer (the LMSC field is not dependable). Names are often different from how they appear in the Registration file due to marriages, nicknames, whims and errors.

We maintain a permanent SwimmerID for each of the approximately 12,000 people who are included in our archives. We have a list of every name/age with which they've been recorded. When new information comes in, all those contained in the list are assigned the permanent SwimmerID. All names/ages which are not in our list are matched either in a guessing process or by serious research. Some errors are certain to persist in this process, but it is the best we can do until USMS Registration and Top Ten are administered with a universal permanent swimmer id.

The SwimmerID has three parts. The first 3 characters are the 3 most obscure letters of the last name. Characters 4 and 5 are birthyear. Characters 6 and 7 are birthday encoded with a function called "Date_code". This is documented in the function "SWIMMERID". In our databases, these three fields are called: Alphacode, Birthyear and Birthday.