Anyone know what the entry deadline will be for the SCY 2004 national meet?
Reason I ask -- the meet is rather early this year (April 22-25). In New England, we are looking to schedule our local SCY championship meet. It would be nice to be able to have our meet before the entry deadline for the nationals, so that people can use times from our meet to enter.
(Seems to me it makes sense for USMS to push the entry deadline as close to the meet as practical, since I imagine lots of other LMSCs will have SCY championship meets right around the entry deadline.)
-Rick
Ack. Way too early. I guess that means really none of the times from LMSC championship meets will be able to be used for nationals entries. I don't think any LMSCs have their big meets finished by March 11.
-Rick
I am the liaison from the Championship Committee for this meet. The meet information is not yet available to the public until it is finalized after the United States Aquatic Sports convention later this month. Changes may be made to it due to rules changes, Championship Committee discussion, etc.
We have some option to change the due dates, but I doubt that we could alter it enough to have it be after most LMSC championship meets anyway. There is a lot of data entry and processing after the due date and we have to allow enough time for the meet host to do a thorough job. However, I will take your comments to convention.
may i ask where you found the information? or are you part of the nationals committee, and that's not something that's part of general public knowledge yet?
Since Nationals is so early this year would you guys in New England consider holding the meet in early or mid-May depending on when the Zone meet is. I've been to a few of your Championships and you run a great meet. March is too early for an end of season meet for those swimmers who aren't traveling to Nationals. I'd like to see a high quality meet in the Zone in early May.
Paul Fortoul
Hi Bob,
I will discuss this entry deadline with Mel Goldstein at convention later this week.
The issues we face are: 75% of swimmers enter in the last week before the deadline, problem entries (approximately 10% have errors of some sort that require swimmer contact) need to be solved, psyche sheets posted for corrections from swimmers after initial problems solved, then printing. So the timeline starts from the printer deadline and works backwards. Even though we do not publish the entire heat sheet now due to deck seeding, we still have to do teams, team divisions, the final layout of the program, etc. after the entry deadline.
Sandi
Sandi:
I wonder if with the growing popularity of on-line entry and the super meet management of the people in INDY if they can make do with an last week in March or early April deadline.
Paul:
We are meeting later this month to nail down our scheduling. Must say that most in New England are anxious to play outside once April turns from gloom to bloom.
In any case, we will have something together soon.
Sandi:
Please tell Mel that the only reason that I suggest it is that we used a 12 day deadline at 2003 NE SCY and while he will get about 2.5 to 3.0 more entries I know he is at least 4 times better than us.
Thanks
Bob
One other suggestion -- it is one we are considering here in NE for our meet: Entry fees based on entry date. I.e., if you send your entry in early, it's cheaper, and if you send your entry in late, it's more expensive. By a couple dollars. I wonder if that kind of incentive would help. (I wonder out loud for our own meet's purposes.)
We've also considered a more extreme form of this -- something such as, you can enter after the entry deadline, but for a $20, or $30 or something penalty.
I'm happy to handle one or two very last-minute entries, especially if they are financially lucrative. :-)
-Rick
