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
Michael,
I downloaded the SDIF file with the intention of putting it into the USMS searchable database. However, there is a formatting problem with it as it now stands. The date header (the 'B11' line near the top of the file) has the meet coded with a 'Y' at the end. This is the code normally reserved for a SCY meet. Similarly, all the times are followed by a 'Y' indicating the same course distance. In both cases there should be an 'S' for short course meters. I'm nervous about loading in this file because I'm not sure how the database will interpret it. Is there any chance of getting a corrected version? Unfortunately, for me to correct the file would mean changing each one by hand -- I can't easily do a search on 'Y' and do a simple replace since some names have 'Y' in them.
Thanks for the help....
Mel Dyck
Michael,
I downloaded the SDIF file with the intention of putting it into the USMS searchable database. However, there is a formatting problem with it as it now stands. The date header (the 'B11' line near the top of the file) has the meet coded with a 'Y' at the end. This is the code normally reserved for a SCY meet. Similarly, all the times are followed by a 'Y' indicating the same course distance. In both cases there should be an 'S' for short course meters. I'm nervous about loading in this file because I'm not sure how the database will interpret it. Is there any chance of getting a corrected version? Unfortunately, for me to correct the file would mean changing each one by hand -- I can't easily do a search on 'Y' and do a simple replace since some names have 'Y' in them.
Thanks for the help....
Mel Dyck
