Attention all regional championship meet directors! This message comes from the capital of master racing--New England. Here in the upper right hand of the U.S. our members participate in competitons at rate of close to 50%. This year, we are putting out a challenge to all other parts of the country for this year's SCM season. We propose to score our 2002 New England Short Course Meters Competition, scheduled for December 14-15th against all other regional SCM competitions to determine regional bragging rights for SCM Regional Team Championship. SPMA has already accepted the challenge and will go head-to-head against New England.
Here's how it works: We will take results file from all participating regional USMS sanctioned SCM championship meets held from October 1st through December 31st of this year. We will treat ever participant in that meet as a member of one "regional team" and score to the 16th place by age group (relays score twice the number of points and will also be scored to the 16th place). We will include all individual events through the 1500 m and all realys through the 800m. We will present results in two different ways: 1) Virtual SCM Championship and 2) Bilateral Regional meets (NE vs SPMA, for example).
Here's how you can participate: Send me an email "registering" your regional championship in this contest. We plan to score this meet using Hy Tek so we ask that people provide appropriate Hy Tek file.
Why are we doing this?
Over the years, we've learned that getting people to participate in competition keeps them swimming masters longer. New England's membership really took off when we created large regional championship meets with LOTS OF RELAYS. This made the meet fun for everyone and first-time competitors find relays the least intimidating way of getting into the racing spirit. We believe the regional championships are the key to getting USMS membership growth up to 25% range and getting our membership retention rate over 80%- that has been our four year average rate in both categories here in New England.
More information on the New England meet can be found at:
www.greatbaymasters.org/02scmchamp.html
How can you help?
I need a good list of regional SCM championship meets (I do have the list from the USMS calendar but it's not complete) and also need the email contacts for people, other than meet directors, who can help promote this in their region
Bob Seltzer
NEM Championship Meet Coordinator
We're off to a pretty good start with Pacific Masters and Northwest joining SPMA and NEM. We still hope that several more regional meets will join us. (Mel Goldstein--are you out there?)
Under the rules of engagement, if Bill Volckening elects to swim in your regional meet he belongs to your team.
Michael: Congratulations on reaching the 10,000 mark. At our current growth rate of 20% we should reach 2,000 in 2003 or 2004. We are pretty much accepting different rules for different meets in terms of entries/events. For example, in NE we do allow people to enter up to five event per day for 10 events per individual. We also are not offering the 800m or 1500m this year due to time constraints.
We do hope to repeat this challenge in some form for 2003 and will initiate discussions on this topic right around the New Year.
Re 2003 NE SCY Championships: Not scheduled yet but hope to finalize in next several weeks. We might also try a virtual dual meet in real-time via the webcam. You'll note that 3 of the regional SCM meets are the same weekend this year (NEM, NW and SPMA).
We're off to a pretty good start with Pacific Masters and Northwest joining SPMA and NEM. We still hope that several more regional meets will join us. (Mel Goldstein--are you out there?)
Under the rules of engagement, if Bill Volckening elects to swim in your regional meet he belongs to your team.
Michael: Congratulations on reaching the 10,000 mark. At our current growth rate of 20% we should reach 2,000 in 2003 or 2004. We are pretty much accepting different rules for different meets in terms of entries/events. For example, in NE we do allow people to enter up to five event per day for 10 events per individual. We also are not offering the 800m or 1500m this year due to time constraints.
We do hope to repeat this challenge in some form for 2003 and will initiate discussions on this topic right around the New Year.
Re 2003 NE SCY Championships: Not scheduled yet but hope to finalize in next several weeks. We might also try a virtual dual meet in real-time via the webcam. You'll note that 3 of the regional SCM meets are the same weekend this year (NEM, NW and SPMA).
