Colonies Zone SCY Championships - Fairfax VA

My proposal for a possible solution. Because it is a championship meet, everyone entering distance must submit the date and location of the USMS meet where they achieved their entry time. This would eliminate someone from doing their first USMS distance event at this meet. I think this would eliminate some of the entries. However, I'm curious as to what others think. This is not required at Nationals. Are you ok with your suggestion that it be more difficult to enter Zones? As far as implementation, I would think your suggestion would require all distance entries to be via paper and the meet director would have to process them in the order in which they were received. The meet director would have to check meet results to verify the swims qualify and once that entry is verified, it gets ratified and the first xx ratified entries becomes the psych sheet. Is this how you envision the process going? Aside - if the verification meet was the previous weekend and the meet results are not yet available, I guess that is tough luck for the swimmer and they have to hope the results are released before the meet fills up? I guess my point is I agree with your idea in theory but I am not convinced it could be implemented without undue burden on the host. And why should the host care this much about who is swimming in these events to go through all of this? Jeff

I have a question for our fellow swimmer swimmer jroddin. If an extra 100 swimmers were to enter the, for example LCM nationals, beyond what is "normally" entered would it affect the meet in any. I know at the SCY nationals you could enter both the 1000 and 1650 and without QT's as you get to enter 3 events without QT's. So lets say an extra 100 to 200 entries beyond "normal" for distance day, would that affect Distance Day in anyway ? With this TRI group 45 minutes away from the Maryland LCM national site in the summer of 2014, which i hope to attend, I was curious .

Ask the meet director to increase the entry limit for the distance events.

Ask the meet director to increase the entry limit for the distance events. I imagine the host is constrained by time and set the limits accordingly.

Ask the meet director to increase the entry limit for the distance events. The meet director probably can't get the pool any earlier and I don't think that she wants Friday running til 11PM. Then, get up early to run the Saturday session. The problem is Team Z hoarding up all the slots so out of towners can't get them. Whatever, just send my meet dollars somewhere else.

I have a question for our fellow swimmer swimmer jroddin. If an extra 100 swimmers were to enter the, for example LCM nationals, beyond what is "normally" entered would it affect the meet in any. I know at the SCY nationals you could enter both the 1000 and 1650 and without QT's as you get to enter 3 events without QT's. So lets say an extra 100 to 200 entries beyond "normal" for distance day, would that affect Distance Day in anyway ? With this TRI group 45 minutes away from the Maryland LCM national site in the summer of 2014, which i hope to attend, I was curious . For SCY Nationals you could NOT enter both the 1000 and 1650 without QTs. Here is a cut and paste from the meet info: “Competitors may enter both distance events if they meet the NQT in at least one of them.” Greensboro had the ability to run two 11 lane courses, so the decision was made to allow swimmers to enter both distance events (provided they met the NQT restriction). The entry count was low enough that two 10 lane courses was adequate so that is how we ran the meet. But what was important was the ability to handle extra capacity if needed. The policy is to only allow swimmers to enter both distance events if a third course is available (or sufficient total lanes are available) or the meet is a 5 day format. For Indy, for instance, they only have two 8 lane courses – so swimmers cannot enter both distance events. Mission Viejo will have a 5 day format and swimmers will be permitted to swim both distance events (subject to an NQT restriction that will be announced soon). University of Maryland is expecting a potentially large attendance due to the number of registered swimmers so close to the site (see UMBC, 2000 LC Nationals...). As such they will be offering a 5 day format. Therefore they should be able to accommodate extra distance event entries. Here is an old thread about distance swimmers at Nationals: forums.usms.org/showthread.php Jeff

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.

Though I have heard about this thread, it is interesting seeing the comments for the first time. I'm in an interesting position due to my USMS roles. I am sure that I am going to hear comments about this all the way until Convention is over, but as has been pointed out, first-come-first-served is the most fair way to do entries. No one did anything wrong, and this has been going on for the last several years (albiet not with the swiftness of 2013), so it isn't like we didn't see this day coming. We're going to have to adapt and sign up when entries go live just like these 128 swimmers.

Muppet, I am disappointed to hear you say we have to learn to live with the situation. When these two events fill up in 2 hours a full 2.5 months before the event, something is not right. I wonder if each individual swimmer signed his/her self up or did a coach sign up everyone? I'll probably never know. Anyway, if I approach the meet as not having any distance events (at least available to me), it is no longer worth the drive and 2 nights in a hotel. I think it will affect others also. I love this meet and want to see it continue to be successful.

I can't offer any solutions, but I am concerned that this has discouraged some people from attending the meet on the other 2 days. I don't participate on the distance day, but I do like having lots of swimmers attending the other sessions for both competition sake as well as providing some rest between events :)