Colonies Zone SCY Championships - Fairfax VA

That is soo funny that there was a whole discussion about this on the triathlete forum. I think that Curl Burke Masters did this a few years and then, all of a sudden stopped. Of course, they didn't take up every spot on the first day. Congrats on making Long Distance All-American! You too, Chris Stevenson! www.usms.org/.../ldaa12m.pdf

Unmitigated self promotion (or Meet promotion) We are having a single event One mile meet on Sunday 24 February 2013 at City College of San Francisco. Great idea. I know The Olympic Club also does a 1500 SCM meet each year (or at least has). I think those are great meet ideas. Alas, I'm not in shape to do either of those this year, but will in the future.

To try to put a more positive message out. Maybe, during the zone meet, the FXCM team could be encouraged to sponsor a meet in the future. They currently have over 590 members in their club, which dwarfs the next largest team in the PV LMSC. Patriot Masters which runs the scy zone meet have 50 or less members. My current club BUMS Niagara LSMC, with 80 members, runs a 1 day meet. My old club FISH Metro LMSC, with 40 members, runs an unsanctioned 1 hr postal for the club and any nearby usms swimmers. So I think encouraging them to give something to our mutual community would be a good message.

Here's my take on the subject (a note, though--I have absolutely zero interest in ever swimming the 1000 or 1650 ever again after my USAS coach making me swim the 1000 in pretty much every meet throughout high school, so none of this personally affects me): Yes, Team Z did follow the rules. I still consider it to be highly unethical. Yes, the entry procedures are first come, first serve. But, given that we are ~2.5 months out from the meet, does anyone have any reasonable expectation that they'd need to register within the first hour or two to make it into the distance events, especially when there are 80 slots for the 1000 and 48 for the 1650? One of my teammates signed up for the 1000 about 2 weeks before Zones last year and got in. There are plenty of meets in the area that offer the 1000 and/or the mile during the season, and I can't recall any of them filling up remotely near that quickly. I know plenty of USMS swimmers do wait till the last second to register for meets (I've done it myself a few times), but the majority of my teammates who compete regularly do things in a timely manner. Like me, they're planning on registering for Zones by the end of the month, giving a full month and a half till the meet. Per all the meets I've participated at in the last 1.5 years as a Masters swimmer, that is normally quite sufficient for a large meet like Zones. For a team, whether it's a team primarily comprised of triathletes or us "normal" Masters swimmers, to take up over 80% of the available slots within the first few hours of entries going live for a Zone level meet seems unprofessional and disrespectful to everyone else who has no reasonable expectation that they'd need to be up at midnight on the first day of entries just to have a fair shot at entering. This is supposed to be a championship meet. I only started swimming at the Colonies Zone meet last year, so I can't speak for previous years, but I saw a LOT of very fast swims last year, as befitting a championship meet. For people to enter with NTs in space limited events or enter with ridiculously slow times again seems to be abrogating the purpose of a championship meet. I personally think that any meet with a hard limit on entries for certain events should have QTs for those events. Or potentially have a hard check on QTs for the events, and if the events aren't filled by a month or so into the entry process, then open it up to all swimmers, QTs or no. The defending female champ in the 1000 from last year's Zones was shut out from entering...because she waited a day or two after entries went live before trying to register. For an event with 80 entries, that's not an expected result. Again, for a non-championship meet, that's fine, but for a *championship* meet, why are defending champs being shut out by NT swimmers in space limited events? In addition, my team hosted a meet at the beginning of February. While we didn't offer the 1000/1650, we did offer the 500, and it was space limited. The 500 stayed open for about 3-4 weeks, I believe, till it filled up, about 2.5 weeks before the meet. That's been my experience with all space limited events up until the current situation with Zones. And in regards to the argument that Zones should be open to people swimming their first meet, I think that's a specious argument when it comes to space limited events. For non-space limited events, by all means, go ahead. If these Team Z swimmers, or anyone else, want to swim the 1000/1650, there are plenty of opportunities in the VA/MD area to swim that at other meets. Just off the top of my head, there was a meet in Richmond this past weekend that offered both the 1000 and the 1650 and there's a meet at UMBC in early March that offers the 1000. If all these NT swimmers *need* to swim the 1000/1650, why not swim it at one of these meets rather than at the space limited zone championship meet? Looking forward to future Colony Zone Championship meets, here are my recommendations for handling the 1000/1650 entries: Institute QTs for the two events, and have them apply on a two year rolling window like the NQTs work for Nationals. If someone can't find the opportunity to swim the 1000/1650 in the previous two years, especially since there are other meets that offer those events, why should they swim it at a championship meet? As I mentioned before, maybe have the entries for those two events only be open to swimmers who've been verified to have swum the QT via the times database for the first month entries are open--if they don't have a time in the database, tough luck. If the events aren't filled within that first month, then open the entries up to everyone. Just my $.02...

To try to put a more positive message out. Maybe, during the zone meet, the FXCM team could be encouraged to sponsor a meet in the future. They currently have over 590 members in their club, which dwarfs the next largest team in the PV LMSC. Patriot Masters which runs the scy zone meet have 50 or less members. My current club BUMS Niagara LSMC, with 80 members, runs a 1 day meet. My old club FISH Metro LMSC, with 40 members, runs an unsanctioned 1 hr postal for the club and any nearby usms swimmers. So I think encouraging them to give something to our mutual community would be a good message. As a member of that small Patriot Master team, my understanding is Team Z has said repeatedly that they will host a meet but never do. It's much easier to crash CZ for time trialing and then declare that it's beneath then to swim 2 per lane. Patriot Masters also hosts the Sprint Classic in the fall.

But lets look at it a little different way. Are the other 1650 / 1000 events that can be swum in the area? Yes, in fact, although apparently not nearly enough. I'm doing check off challenge this year and am having trouble finding many 1650's and 1000's offered. But for argument's sake, there's a nice meet offered by Maryland Masters at UBMC pool where the entire morning session is devoted to the 1000. No cut off as far as I can see. And currently only 34 people entered, only one of whom appears to be from Team Z. I have no dogs in this fight; I avoid long distance like the plague. I can understand both sides. But at the end of the day, I do find it disappointing that a very high proportion of the swimmers that filled this championship's events don't even have a previous time posted for it (per previous poster).... particularly when there are other options out there for a time trial if that's what they're after.

Congrats on making Long Distance All-American! You too, Chris Stevenson! www.usms.org/.../ldaa12m.pdf Thanks, after 4 2nd Place rankings, I finally got AA ranking. Back to the thread at hand: Ok, Team Z can't do their time trialing at practice.

It's much easier to crash CZ for time trialing That's the part that makes me uneasy. I have no problem with anyone entering the meet without previous results; we all have to start somewhere, right? But surely by encouraging that number of people to immediately sign up for the space-limited events, the coaches (or whoever) had to have known they would be blocking nearly everyone else from the event. It strikes me as piggy-backing on the work someone else has gone through organizing the meet for the zone. I would think that if they wanted all of those people to have a pool time for the 1000 or mile the right thing to do would have been to host a distance meet themselves.

That is soo funny that there was a whole discussion about this on the triathlete forum. I think that Curl Burke Masters did this a few years and then, all of a sudden stopped. Of course, they didn't take up every spot on the first day.

I'd think Colonies Zone would be flattered that it has become so popular. It's disappointing that relatively few seem to agree. That's my point though. There is a good chance that the actions of TeamZ will decrease participation by displacing people who would have entered more events and swum on all three days.