Deck Seeding

Originally posted by Phil Arcuni Travelling from the west coast, it will be difficult for me to make it to the pool the day before for check in. For the 1000/1650, they allowed internet check-in the day before. This came in handy, as I arrived at the pool about 45 minutes before my mile. :) Also, if you know anyone arriving early, they could check you in.

I, too, preferred the system used this time around. Far and away, if you've taken the time to enter and get there, once you're there, you're going to swim most, if not all, the events you've entered. I'd say that if you've come by plane, you could just check in once for ALL events. I also heard grumbling about initials being left off in one area but initialed in another that resulted in swimmers not being allowed to compete but don't know if that was related to the change in procedure or not. Phil, you could have someone (competent) check you in over the net if need be.

You were able to check in over the internet for each day during the check-in window. So I checked in for Friday on Thursday from my office--and it was available each of the other days also. Very successful and a great improvement from prior years. The rules were also interpreted to allow same day scratches, which was helpful for people who found out the meet was running longer than expected or had other reasons to change their mind. The only change I would suggest would be to push back the relay entry deadline to the same day rather than 4:00 the day before. Some teams need to wait and see who actually made it to the meet to be able to enter relays--although I understand why the hosts might not want to encourage that behavior, and neither do I really.

The internet check-in was great. I used it to check in for my 1000 on Thursday. I checked in on Wednesday before my flight and had a confirmation number in case there were any screw-ups. I think they also had internet check-in for people arriving on later days. So if you're flying out Friday night for a Saturday event, you could check in online on Friday afternoon. It was also nice knowing the heat and lane assignments. I was able to warm up in the course where I was swimming.

It isn't at all clear from the data on this site that internet checkin on any day other than before the first is possible. Perhaps someone can clarify. I have no intention of swimming the first day (more than four lengths!!) so I would have liked to fly in that day. If I could internet check in early Wednesday morning, that could work. Otherwise, I will try to find someone to check me in. But finding fellow team members who will fly from here for the distance day is not easy. I suspect this minor inconvenience of west-coast sprinters/stroke swimmers attending an east-coast meet does not invalidate the larger-good of the pre-day checkin and heat sheets, but it is an inconvenience. Jim, are you going?

I don't have any experience, but I am worried about the Long Course Nationals, which I intend to attend. Travelling from the west coast, it will be difficult for me to make it to the pool the day before for check in. The only solution I see is to come a day earlier, with additional hotel costs and another day off of work. That is a pretty unpleasant thing to do, when I never had any problem with same day check in or understand the attraction of heat sheets. But I may not understand how things work, either.

I thought the deck seeding procedure, as well as the frequent announcements about it before and during the meet, was very helpful and the ASU folks should be commended for their efforts. To not have to race to a posting site 20 minutes before the race start (as in previous Nats), instead having the daily heat sheets in hand upon entrace each day, was extremely helpful in planning the time constraints as well as warmup requirements - leading all of us to better choose which course in which to warmup. The only comment concerning the actual procedure I'd make is that the Powers That Be choose a format and stick with it. At the beginning of the meet, the checkin task was to circle or X out the event number across from your name. This later switched to a blank line/bar that had to be initialed for each event (basically replacing the event number digits on the checkin sheet with underscores). I personally preferred the circle/X to the blank line approach. Why the switch? Perhaps the ASU folks can shed some light on this as well as "lessons learned" via the entire process? A teammate of mine (and a competitor of yours, Tall Paul) missed out on a 100 free opportunity due to the event line disappearing underneath his ruler when he was marking his final day's check-in, and hence, he didn't properly complete the check-in for that event. Ultimately it was his mistake - but he was surprised and then very disappointed when he saw the seedings for the event and realized that he wouldn't be able to swim that race.

Umm, thanks for your sympathy in warming up at 2:30 am. We also will have to swim the 400's at 4:00 am, the oldest swimmers go first when we run the heats old to young, slow to fast. How about running reverse order sometime to be fair to all age-groups? Lets run the fast heat of the men's 50 free at 4:00 am and see if anyone minds that.....just kidding.....

this may be a very silly suggestion, as I wasn't there, didn't do that, don't really have a picture in my head of what was going on... but here goes... instead of having internet checkins and paper checkins why don't you just set up a computer (or two) at the meet and have everyone check in via the internet whether they are 3,000 miles away or 3 feet away. No need to try to 'merge' two different checkin systems. an alternative to the "paper" checkin... use scanable documents at the meet (those things that you bubble in while taking tests) The sheets come in many standard configurations (cheapest way) or they could be designed and printed anyway the committee wants with the actual events printed on them. The scanner could scan the document and enter the data right into the computer data base. (As a graduate research assistant I use to work with NCS scanners and helped to design some custom documents) Lainey

But as Jim pointed out, there is no assurance that internet checking for all days will be allowed at Rutgers.