Colonies Zone SCY Championships - Fairfax VA

To answer Jeff's questions. Yes, I do realize this is more restrictive than nationals. Nationals has a qualifying time and more time to run the event. I think the majority of the submitted times can be verified from the national database. I have not thought through how to verify others, but if the meet director decides to try this, I will volunteer to assist in verifying times. I am going to make a suggestion and I don't know if it will do any good but in the Michigan LMSC we have experienced this and had to make changes to accommodate all of the swimmers. We allow any swimmer to swim the 1000 and 1650 Free and we do not cap the entries at this time. We had 90 swimmers swim the 1650, about 110 in the 1000, and about 133 in the 500 Free. Those events are offered on 3 separate days and if they weren't we would not able to do this. I looked at the entry for George Mason and they are using the pool as much as they can so there is no suggested improvement there. I noticed that the meet on Saturday and Sunday gets done between 2:30 PM and 3:00 PM and that seems a little early In Michigan we go until 6:00 on Saturday and between 5 and 6 on Sunday. This year we are in a 10 lane pool and start at 1:00 for the Friday session We will run an early session starting at 2:00 and have until 5:00 and then a second warm up starts then and then have a 6:00 session for people that can't make the early session. We will hope to finish up at 8:00 PM and have gone until 9:00 PM but this is the first year we have had a session earlier than 4:00 PM. I have been the Meet Director 11 times and this year will be my 12 year and I have learned something new every year. Betsy idea of verifying times is something I always do and its easy for me because I know most of the swimmers swimming and there capabilities and have past meet results and the USMS National Data Base to check entry times for accuracy and for the sand baggers. I have changed many entry times because of this and the USMS Rule Book allows me to do this. In past years this has saved huge amounts of time. If someone does not have an entry time in the event for the last two years, they can swim the event in the warm up pool. During the distance events when warm up is over we run an additional 8 lanes with stop watches if we have to meet the time line. Usually we only use 4 lanes and this year we will have additional timing pads in 4 lanes with 4 lanes manual. We only do this for the distance events (500, 1000, and the 1650) and all of the other events are swam in a 10 lane course and we start at 9:00 and end at 5 or 6 with a break of 2 hours at mid day on Saturday. The one thing we do not offer is the 3 long relays of the 400 Free, 400 Medley, and 800 Free. And depending on how long those take could make it impossible for any changes to be made to the current format. Its a lot of extra work getting timers and making accommodations for the distance swimmers but to me its worth it. A lot of our triathletes will not swim in the meet unless they can swim those distance events and when they are swimming 3 days they will swim other events plus relays to get there moneys worth. We have about 50% of our LMSC participate in our State Championship meet and we have found in the last 5 years that swimmers want to swim distance events and so we try to think of ways to best service this and keep the entries up. I will provide a link to the 2012 meet and you can see the statics at the bottom of the page on the Michigan Masters website. www.michiganmasters.com/

To answer Jeff's questions. Yes, I do realize this is more restrictive than nationals. Nationals has a qualifying time and more time to run the event. I think the majority of the submitted times can be verified from the national database. I have not thought through how to verify others, but if the meet director decides to try this, I will volunteer to assist in verifying times. I am going to make a suggestion and I don't know if it will do any good but in the Michigan LMSC we have experienced this and had to make changes to accommodate all of the swimmers. We allow any swimmer to swim the 1000 and 1650 Free and we do not cap the entries at this time. We had 90 swimmers swim the 1650, about 110 in the 1000, and about 133 in the 500 Free. Those events are offered on 3 separate days and if they weren't we would not able to do this. I looked at the entry for George Mason and they are using the pool as much as they can so there is no suggested improvement there. I noticed that the meet on Saturday and Sunday gets done between 2:30 PM and 3:00 PM and that seems a little early In Michigan we go until 6:00 on Saturday and between 5 and 6 on Sunday. This year we are in a 10 lane pool and start at 1:00 for the Friday session We will run an early session starting at 2:00 and have until 5:00 and then a second warm up starts then and then have a 6:00 session for people that can't make the early session. We will hope to finish up at 8:00 PM and have gone until 9:00 PM but this is the first year we have had a session earlier than 4:00 PM. I have been the Meet Director 11 times and this year will be my 12 year and I have learned something new every year. Betsy idea of verifying times is something I always do and its easy for me because I know most of the swimmers swimming and there capabilities and have past meet results and the USMS National Data Base to check entry times for accuracy and for the sand baggers. I have changed many entry times because of this and the USMS Rule Book allows me to do this. In past years this has saved huge amounts of time. If someone does not have an entry time in the event for the last two years, they can swim the event in the warm up pool. During the distance events when warm up is over we run an additional 8 lanes with stop watches if we have to meet the time line. Usually we only use 4 lanes and this year we will have additional timing pads in 4 lanes with 4 lanes manual. We only do this for the distance events (500, 1000, and the 1650) and all of the other events are swam in a 10 lane course and we start at 9:00 and end at 5 or 6 with a break of 2 hours at mid day on Saturday. The one thing we do not offer is the 3 long relays of the 400 Free, 400 Medley, and 800 Free. And depending on how long those take could make it impossible for any changes to be made to the current format. Its a lot of extra work getting timers and making accommodations for the distance swimmers but to me its worth it. A lot of our triathletes will not swim in the meet unless they can swim those distance events and when they are swimming 3 days they will swim other events plus relays to get there moneys worth. We have about 50% of our LMSC participate in our State Championship meet and we have found in the last 5 years that swimmers want to swim distance events and so we try to think of ways to best service this and keep the entries up. I will provide a link to the 2012 meet and you can see the statics at the bottom of the page on the Michigan Masters website. www.michiganmasters.com/