Who made the order of events for Fort Lauderdale Nationals?

John, John, John, first off since this is your first post most people would be willing to forgive your manners. However, given your "call sign" (Goodsmith?) I feel I must make things clear. Everyone need not confuse you and I in this lame attempt at using the word "good" in association with you when all that are in the know.....know your know as "The Evil Smith"!! Get some manners, and instead of complaining get involved! PS: must be all that "D" training at altitude killing off brain cells!

Boys, boys, boys…. Let’s play nice out there:) The bright ideas for the order of events for nationals come from the hard working volunteers of USMS, without whom none of this would be possible. And look on the bright side us distance guys will get the 1000, 1650 and 500 under our belts, before the sprinters even get wet. I’ll be ready to kick back and relax with a frosty one at the Button while Tall Paul is warming up for his 50 Free.

Mark, your trying to reason with a man that is unreasonable! Remember, he's had a chip on his shoulder for over 20 yars because Florida didn't recruit him and he had to go to Texas! Plus he's in the telecom industry! Run away, watch your children...be very afraid!

you we're warned Mark, watch your fingers! By the way, you do realize your discussing distance event scheduling with some who never has until now, and after this meet never again swim anything over the 200 free! JS, Bobby is gonna take you down and your gonna buy a lot of beers for RJK & I after that swim!

By the way, you all know John Smith aka "TheGoodSmith" is really Ion?!

"He Who Shall Not Be Named" is back, really? The order of events could be a lot worse. At Savannah, there were thunderstorms thursday night, and (I've been told) the power went out. The last two heats of the mile were moved to the beginning of friday morning. A guy on my team, Erik, swam the mile at the start of the day, the 400 IM a few heats later, the 200 Br during the day, and the very last heat of the day (on a relay). He was in remarkably good spirits for someone who spent 15 hours, and a lot of yards, in the pool.

Ane now you know why I selected my User Name.

.......... still not satisfied. Dude, it's about planning. Picking the 3 longest freestyle events back to back in the schedule is definitely not cool.

John, The short answer to your question is the House of Delegates at the annual convention chooses the order of events at nationals. Actually, they choose 3 different versions of the order of events and these versions are rotated. The schedule for that is listed in the rulebook (www.usms.org/.../part1.pdf on page 42). The last time these schedules were chosen, a subcommittee of the championship committee met and came up with 7 proposed schedules. A set of guidelines is used when making up the order of events. For example, either the first of last day of the meet will be the distance day (the 800/1000 and 1500/1650), no more than one distance event on the other days of the meet. Because of time the 400/500 is split between two days. A stroke will only be swum once per day (so you won't have the 50 and 200 *** on the same day). After all these conditions are met, we then try to avoid a set of doubles that is determined by a survey of swimmers. This way we avoid things such as the 200 IM and 200 back ending up back to back events. There are 10 sets of doubles that we avoid. We then go through each schedule and look at the number of swimmers that we would expect to enter an event and try to determine an estimated timeline. We use results from previous nationals held in similar cities to come up with these estimates. We use scratch rates and no show rates from previous nationals as well as we try to load balance the days of the meet. It is important that Friday is not 7 hours long and Saturday is not 12 hours long. Once all this has been completed, we present the schedules to the House of Delegates. They vote for their least favorite and we eliminate the schedules one at a time until there are only three left. These are the ones that we will use for the next two years. This is not an exact science. We try to consider what is best for all swimmers in the meet, but by no means do we always come up with the best possible schedule for all people. However, Paul is right, we are always open to folks that want to help. To get involved, let your local LSMC know that you would be interested in going to convention. Alternatively, contact Barry Fasbender, the chair of the championship committee and let him know that you would be interested in helping develop the list of possible schedules.

Actually, there is considerable planning that goes into these events. However, you bring up an interesting question, why are the three longest events the first three? The 1650/1000 will always be on the same day in a four day national championship. It has to do with limited resources. We put the two longest events on the day that the fewest people will be there for a reason, to keep down the length of the day. If we put the 1000 on Saturday, it would be extremely popular. As it is right now, on a Thursday, the event lasts half a day (about 4 - 6 hours). On a Saturday, it would probably take 3/4 of a day (6-9 hours) or more. This would prevent us from being able to offer but one of two other events. At short course nationals, it is not uncommon for a well attended meet (one that approaches 2000 swimmers) to have days that last 12 hours. We are trying to prevent the days from being longer than 12 hours. We are trying some other options. At LC Nationals this year at Mission Viejo, the meet will run for 5 days. At this meet, the 1500 and 800 are on separate days. This is going to allow distance swimmers to compete on both events. However, there is a cost involved. It is one more day of rent on for a pool ($1000 - $5000 depending on the facility)and one more day of volunteers (about 300 people pre day). For the athetes, it means one more day of vacation, one more day of hotel and food. If this is successful, perhaps we will be able to spread out the events more in the future. As for the 500, it is on the first day only in one out of the three schedules. We would not want to always have the 400 IM as the Friday distance event. It would discriminate against IMers. Especially those that can make it to the meet until Saturday. In a large meet, we would expect Saturday to have about 200 - 300 more swimmers than Friday. Why is the event first? In outdoor meets, the logic is that it will get warmer as the day progresses. We would rather let the sprinters and shorter races take place when it is hot out. Let the distance swimmers go first while the temperature is still cool is the idea we had in mind. However, we do rotate that in some of the schedules. There are going to be tradeoffs with any of these ideas. If we tried to put the 500 at the end of the meet, people would be upset that sprinters could leave at 3:00 on Sunday and fly home, but the distance swimmers in the 500 wouldn't finish for another 3 hours, effectively missing their flights and forcing them to bear another day of hotel, food and vacation. If we put the 1000 or 1650 on a day other than Thursday in a SC nationals and moved sprint events onto Thursday, it would drive participation down at the meet. Now the meet host doesn't make money. We have to balance the needs of the athletes, the meet host and the volunteers. Lots of different angles to plan from.