Colonies Zone SCY Championships - Fairfax VA

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. To sign up for the online entries...each person has to do it themselves. They have to enter their own name, USMS #, birthdate, etc, etc. Lots of personal info. If any of it doesn't match up with the USMS database, then you can't continue anyway. Then a credit card entry needs to be inputed for each separate entry. Even if one person (a coach as you state) could do this...it would be a heck of a lot of work to be done, and surely wouldn't have been able to get his/her whole team in the 2 hour window like that. I'm sure their team probably talked about it, and everyone stayed up till after midnight on the date the registration was opened up, and got themselves signed up! If that's what it takes to get into an event, I guess being proactive works. We have a meet the first week of March in our LMSC with a cap of 18 swimmers for the 1500 SCM Free. Info is on the website listed below, and the location is within 20 minutes of Spokane, WA if you'd like to fly in for a 1500. :) So far there are only 3 entries. Will it actually fill up?? Probably not, but the host team knows how much time/space they can handle and set it at 3 heats worth of swims.

Very nice post Frank. I think your mixing up the distance to all 3 days is a good idea, especially in regards to increased participation. The utilization of the warm up pool is something they do for Distance Day at the Harvard meet (New England SCY Champs). They offer a small discount for the splash fee, as I recall, for an in the water start as the pool is to shallow for a dive and they do get a number of folks to enter. A couple of last things with this years Colonie Zone entry. I had been monitoring the Colony Zone web site for meet and entry info and upon reflection all i remember seeing under this meet was the date ,location maybe the entry closing date and then this "more details to follow" , when i saw it on Saturday, I guess, it was to late. Also the 12 midnite entry opening might be ruling out most of us old folks, it's been years since I even stayed up for New Years. How about a nice 8 AM entry so we can catch all those young folks during their commute. Just a silly thought.

If it's true that some of the swimmers are entering the 1000 with times of 1 hour and 45 minutes, perhaps there is another solution you could try. Assuming many of the Team Z participants really are triathletes, why not offer them the chance to swim in groups in the same lane? They could practice drafting and jostling about for position, which are skills required in triathlon swimming. If individual swimmers are shooting for a Top 10 time and have a reasonable chance to make this, they could request a lane to themselves--in fact, even the slowest swimmers could do this. But I suspect many of them just want to gauge their swimming prowess at this stage of the season and might even volunteer to swim more than one person per lane. You could offer this as a possibility (1 per lane, 2 per lane with no circle swimming, or 3 or more with circle swimming mandatory), explaining that for your time to count for TT purposes, you'd have to opt for 1 per lane, but if this doesn't really matter to you, it would allow more pool swimmers to enter the event if they'd share a lane. In our little Y league, there is a rule that you must swim 3 local meets (though one of these can be a mail-in 1650 you do at your own pool) in order to qualify for championships. It helps ensure that the local meets are better attended. I do feel really bad for guys like Tom Patterson, who are distance beasts and don't have that many opportunities to swim the 1000 or 1650 along with the other events in a really good racing pool not too far away from where he lives. Anyhow, maybe it's not too late for someone diplomatic (Jeff or Muppet) to call up the Team Z captain and see if some of the swimmers would be willing to share a lane. If so, maybe some more spots could open up for the Tom's and Betsy's and other Zones regulars whose presence will be missed by us CZ regulars!

One more idea. This might sound elitist, but triathletes are used to the concept of pro triathletes getting a certain number of slots in every major triathlon. Perhaps CZ and/or other meets that are encountering similar problems with distance events filling up so rapidly could institute the following: 10 percent of the slots will be held in reserve for any swimmer who has established a Top 10 time within the past two years in either the 400, 800, or 1500 SCM or LCM free; or the 500, 1000, or 1650 SCY. These slots will be given out on a first come, first served basis. If they haven't been taken by X date (for instance, two weeks after the meet sign up has started), then they will go in order of application time to whoever is on the waiting list. The percent is arbitrary--you could allow more or less than 10 percent of the slots to remain open to TT swimmers; likewise, the interlude during which TT swimmers could claim such spots doesn't have to be two weeks, it could be longer or shorter. Not only would this allow the top masters pool swimmers more than a two-hour window to swim their favorite event, but it would inspire swimmers and triathletes alike to do more pool meets, including LCM meets during the summer, in the hopes of qualifying in the 10 percent! A win win!

If it's true that some of the swimmers are entering the 1000 with times of 1 hour and 45 minutes, perhaps there is another solution you could try. Assuming many of the Team Z participants really are triathletes, why not offer them the chance to swim in groups in the same lane? They could practice drafting and jostling about for position, which are skills required in triathlon swimming. I do feel really bad for guys like Tom Patterson, who are distance beasts and don't have that many opportunities to swim the 1000 or 1650 along with the other events in a really good racing pool not too far away from where he lives. Anyhow, maybe it's not too late for someone diplomatic (Jeff or Muppet) to call up the Team Z captain and see if some of the swimmers would be willing to share a lane. If so, maybe some more spots could open up for the Tom's and Betsy's and other Zones regulars whose presence will be missed by us CZ regulars! Great post, Jim and thanks! Personally, I am not that upset since I don't have the beastly conditioning for those events right now. Alot of nationally ranked distance times are done at that meet. You might have a killer 1000 1st heat like they had 2 years ago. GMU is a great pool have a season best distance swim and quite a few nationally ranked times come out of that Friday distance session. It is a shame that Team Z went all "rogue" or something.

Team Z is in fact a triathlon team, Jim. I have a friend on Team Z and know that they were told to sign up ASAP to grab the slots. While first come first served seems like a superficially appealing policy, Zones is supposed to be a championship meet for the east coast. Team Z effectively subverted that intent and turned it into their personal distance meet. The problem is how to fix the situation without overburdening the meet director. One easy thing to do would be to ban Friday only entries. Though I guess someone could be a d*ck and enter events on other days that they had no intent to swim. Perhaps the Team Z coach could be prevailed upon to ensure this doesn't happen. That way, if Team Z really wants to swim "Zones," they can swim some other events over the weekend. A lottery?

Please, please, please do not think I am critical of Cheryl and how the meet is run. I always go because it is such a good meet. Yes, I am personally diappointed and I realize that people who don't swim distance don't care. I like to get a distance time at the end of the season (one at zones and one at nationals) and for many years have counted on this meet. I'll find another meet, but that may mean skipping this meet. I don't know yet. If I skip the meet, I will miss all of the crazy relays that our team does.

I do think that human groups tend to form quickly and just as quickly demonize the other "bad people." I know I do! As primarily pool and OW swimmers, it's easy for us to feel that triathletes are the bad guys here. It's a different culture in many ways. Personally, I don't condone how they think it's acceptable to eat children just to improve their level of fitness, but who am I to judge? Just joking, of course. But that is why I recommended that someone tactful, like Jeff Roddin or Jeff Strahota, give somebody at Team Z a call and see if any of them might agree to share a lane. I don't know if this is even legal for liability reasons (what it there was a crash! what if a child fell into the pool and there was a feeding frenzy of triathletes, leading to one of them being injured? Could USMS be sued? Yikes!) Leslie and I, and undoubtedly Paul Smith, should not approach the Team Z leader with inquiries of reasonableness! I suspect we aren't "big" enough emotionally to overlook the pecadilloes of triathletes, including, but not limited to, their strange dietary habits.

Team Z is in fact a triathlon team, Jim. I have a friend on Team Z and know that they were told to sign up ASAP to grab the slots. While first come first served seems like a superficially appealing policy, Zones is supposed to be a championship meet for the east coast. Team Z effectively subverted that intent and turned it into their personal distance meet. The problem is how to fix the situation without overburdening the meet director. One easy thing to do would be to ban Friday only entries. Though I guess someone could be a d*ck and enter events on other days that they had no intent to swim. Perhaps the Team Z coach could be prevailed upon to ensure this doesn't happen. That way, if Team Z really wants to swim "Zones," they can swim some other events over the weekend. A lottery? Obviously people are disappointed but I don't see how TeamZ did anything wrong. Not just in the legalistic sense but in an ethical sense. People on the team wanted to swim in the event. What were they supposed to do, refrain from entering because they were worried that others would be upset? I don't think banning Friday-only entries would work. I think event fees were $5, you could just enter another event and then not show up. That effectively tacks on a $5 surcharge to the distance event and ensures some empty lanes in the other sessions. I agree with the poster who said that starting at midnight would disadvantage some. Assuming it is possible on the Club Assistant side we'll open registration at 8am, probably on a Saturday, for LC Zones. (I don't expect the same run on distance events for LC zones since it is in the triathlon/OW season but you never know.) In terms of it being a championship, though, perhaps in the future for distance events we could save a certain number of spots for swimmers from LMSC outside of the host LMSC. If those spots don't fill up by a certain time, then they get opened up to anyone.

I do think that human groups tend to form quickly and just as quickly demonize the other "bad people." I know I do! As primarily pool and OW swimmers, it's easy for us to feel that triathletes are the bad guys here. It's a different culture in many ways. I think that "regular swimmers" at USMS bash triathletes way too much.