Had a great time at SCY Nat's!

Originally posted by Paul Smith So with that in mind, my challenge was for people to get out and recruit if they want to have more competitive teams.........our getting 80 people to show up didn't "just happen"! The beauty of the current system (much like USS) is that it would allow swimmers from small isolated clubs to swim with a larger state team or any team that want for that matter......free market! OK Paul, so what's it going to take to get you to swim for North Carolina? Do you have an agent we should contact? Tell us your bottom line and we'll make it happen. Maybe you could bring that other Smith too.

What I read into the replies is that the idea of having two seperate team competitions, one for total points in which participation is encouraged and the larger clubs will almost always dominate, and one for fixed size teams of small enough size that smaller clubs could enter a team and compete on a level field, so that small clubs also have a team competition that they can be competitive in without needing to amalgamate with other clubs, is somehow too radical to be considered. All the replies appear to presume that there can only be one competition that must be based on total points whether it is a simple total or averaged or split into catagories. Rather than continuing to go in circles perhaps someone can simply address why it is undesirable to have two competitions to reflect the two contradictory goals of encouraging participation and allowing small teams to compete on a level field? To address Connie's question of "why not average?", it is because averaging means that any swim that doesn't score points becomes a liability and most people will not accept a schema that discourages participation by club members who are not going to score big points. Again, the two goals are contradictory and ANY scheme to "balance" them within a single competition will compromise one of the goals. To address Paul's question of "Level what playing field?" my proposal is to create a new playing field on which teams from small clubs can compete on an even basis with teams from large clubs, it is really very analogous to relay competition. I am NOT proposing to do away with the total points competition. Small clubs will rarely if ever win the total points competition but at least they will have a field on which they can be competitive. I do not see how my proposal would ever limit swimmers from larger teams or how any sort of cap would ever result. We already have relays which are competitions for teams of four swimmers without any resulting limits or caps. There is no need for formulas to balance anything and the competition is as pure as any.

Not to change the subject!! I am Bleary eyed trying to keep up with it. Maybe to much Chlorine on the brain. I live in a place where most adults never even had the chance to learn to swim!! SO it makes recruiting tough. I am working on it. Thankfully the rest of the state swims so I had some team to call my own. I had a great time at the meet and was glad to see the teams who won. They deserved it! They had the best and most swimmers. Anyway, my question is this, does anyone know if we can still get T shirts from the meet? If so who do I contact? Thanks Cindy

Leave well enough alone. We don't need to adjust small team scores in some fashion in order to level the playing field in order to compare to large teams. Note: Mission Viejo won USS Nationals (dare date myself and say the word AAU Nationals) many years on talent that was from out of state. It's just a fact of life. Really.......... people......... it's just Masters Swimming. John Smith

If group point totals are to be kept, how about an association competition based on LMSC? Pacific might go for that. Or how about Bay Area Aquatic Masters? Either one could/would be very large. Personally, I really don't care about overall placement team wise although we had 5 guys and ended up 19th in the Men's Div and 37th overall. I doubt we'd have made top ten in small - maybe. As arbitrary as it may be selecting the cut-off numbers, small, medium and large divisions seemed to make more sense but whatever.

It seems to me that there is a problem in terminology at work here. It seems to me that there are two distinct concepts that are quite different but are not being distinguished. 1) All competitors should have an equal probability of winning regardless of ability. 2) Competition should be decided by the abilities of the competitors not by the conditions of competition or equipment or whatever. When you say that relay competition is an example of an unlevel playing field because Mozambique never wins you are referring to the first concept. When you talk about swimming being a very level playing field because the conditions of competition are almost identical you are referring to the second concept. Personally I use "level playing field" to refer to the second concept not the first. For me the relay competition is still on a level playing field because the conditions of competition are still pretty much identical. If I were to race against Michael Phelps the competition would be very uneven but still on a level playing field. If you had two baseball teams and you allowed one team to field two extra outfielders I would say that you no longer had a level playing field, although it is possible that the smaller team could have better players and actually win. Perhaps there are some people here that think that teams ought to be able to win regardless of the abilities of their swimmers. That has not been my argument, what I suggested was to add a new competition where a small team could win if it had team members that were faster than the teams fielded by larger teams. It is true that in general larger clubs will have more fast swimmers and are likely to win a lot of these competitions, but at least the small teams will have a level field to play on. The basic argument is that if two teams can combine into one team and thereby gain a significant advantage in a competition then the meaningfulness of that competition is open to question - it isn't being decided by the abilities of the competitors but by the organization and size of the team. There are valid reasons to reward organization and participation so go ahead and keep the total points competition. If nothing else, providing an additional competition on which small teams could compete on the basis of their swimming ability would lessen the number of proposals to average the total points per swimmer, which we all know is a bad idea for reasons that have been stated several times.

On a straight-up points basis, is there anyone who thinks realistically that a small team (VCM: 2005 SCY nats 8 members) can "compete" with a large team (CMS/NEM/IM: 2005 SCY nats > 60 members each)? Unlikely. While we might be able to hold measure via individual points thanks to a couple of our "stars", a team such as ours has a lot more trouble fielding relays than a larger team. It's not necessarily a talent issue; we're talking a basic numbers issue and relays require 4 people. When there were separate team divisions, the playing field wasn't level either. There were separate fields! With the elimination of the arbitrary team divisions, there is only one field - and a very large one at that. "Our" field was taken away! Over the past few years, we (VCM) enjoyed our place in the small division (as high as 3rd, Men's), and used that for our local newspaper reporting and advertising purposes. Now we're embarrased to ("local masters swimmers 41st in 2005 National competition". Nice headline eh? It happened). In an area where swimming is an incredibly minor sport, we are interested in using everything positive at our disposal to gain community awareness (not necessarily recognition). It's not about ego. And it isn't just about increasing our numbers. It is also about gaining respect in our community, and some of the perks that come with it - i.e. pool availability and space - not just for our Masters team but for our age group program as well. The comments by Paul and others are well taken. If we don't like our current place in the single division pecking order, we have the option to try to create something more competitive team-wise. Clearly a formulaic approach to try to "level" the playing field is not a popular idea, and any formula that might be agreed by a representative group of people as being "fair" would likely be too complicated to implement. The only avenue left to us, if our goal is to be competitive as a team, is to increase our membership and/or combine into a larger association (any takers for an SPMA team at Nationals?). Until we do so, we will continue to watch the "team" competition from the outside looking in. With the talk of Masters swimming being so inclusive, at least on an individual level, the team competition at Nationals seems to me to be an area that is inconsistent with that broadly-stated goal. Perhaps it should be scrapped. If group point totals are to be kept, how about an association competition based on LMSC?

I’ll probably regret this post, but in my opinion the Olympics and relays are two examples of UNLEVEL playing fields. When was the last time small team (Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, Qatar, Macedonia …) won the medal count in swimming over the “super-clubs” (USA, Australia, USSR/Russia, Germany, China)? And when was the last time you saw Mozambique duke it out for gold with the USA in the 800 Free Relay? And while I haven’t looked at the Estonian Swimming discussion forum lately, I’d guess they aren’t grousing about changing the way Olympic medals are awarded because they aren’t distributed evenly. And one more Olympic note, team size is capped, not fixed. And talk about level playing fields; it doesn’t get more level than swimming. Each swimmer has practically identical conditions (starting block height, lane length, wall conditions, timing system, water temperature …). So if Tall Paul beats you in a race, blame genetics, blame your training, blame Paul (because of his genetics and training) but don’t blame the playing field. In Masters, team scoring is supposed to be the icing on the cake, not the whole meal. My most memorable masters moments are NOT of me hoisting a team banner at nationals, they are of my swims and my fellowship with other masters. I admit I had a different view of this in school, where winning the conference championships was a big deal. But, as I was recently reminded “it's just Masters Swimming”. And congratulation to the Smith’s, Jones’s and all the other folks who were fortunate enough to attend USMS SCN, in sunny Florida!

This may violate the physical laws of the universe, but I find myself agreeing with both the Good Smith and the Evil Smith! I like what Evil/Tall/Paul Smith says about the size of your club as well as the number of swimmers you bring to a meet being entirely in your own hands. And if California wants to combine into one gigantic team, then that's their privilege and entirely within the rules. And Good/John Smith was downright profound with "Really ... people ... it's just Masters Swimming"! This discussion got started because of the perception that all clubs competing in the same division for the top 10 places was not fair to the smaller clubs, and that the old way, top three in small, medium, and large divisions, was more fair. I personally prefer the old way too, but can live with the new top 10 way. What I really wouldn't like to see is a division between so-called superteams and club teams. My club, Swim Kentucky, is sometimes cited as an example of a superteam. We're flattered to be in the company of New England, Colorado, and Illinois Masters! But really folks, unless Nationals is held within driving distance for us, there's not much chance we're going to get a lot of our swimmers there and steamroll everyone else. We like to win as much as anyone else does, but that was not the reason we formed SKY. The reason we did it was for cameraderie. We realized that when the people from Kentucky went to Nationals, we all hung out together, roomed together, went out to dinner together, and cheered for each other, regardless of which club we belonged to. We enjoyed each other's company, and we wanted to be teammates. Combining the local teams into one statewide club was sort of like being tired of just living together, and deciding to get married! It was more about acknowledging that we were already de facto teammates, but our points were being split up among smaller clubs, and we did not get to swim relays together. SKY does give us much more of an opportunity to participate in relays, with participate being the operative word. It's not like the relay I was on with two 48-year-old women, one 55-year-old, and one 74-year-old had a chance of placing! We knew we were seeded last, but we had fun swimming together, and held our heads high! Since we formed SKY, the numbers we've sent to Nationals has ranged from 67 (at Indy) to 1 (at Rutgers). We had 21 in Ft. Lauderdale, more than I expected. Most came because they wanted to go to Florida, or they had family there. Others (like me) often go to Nationals, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're likely to score a lot of points. I haven't scored a point for SKY since its inception (not for lack of trying)! I would be very unhappy to have my club pushed off into a separate division, and stimatized as not being a "real club" just because some of my teammates live 70 miles away. Heck, I commute 36 miles round trip every day, so distances don't mean that much to me. I've heard people say you should have to live within a certain radius to belong to a club. Well, I live in a rural county and work in the next county. There isn't a pool in the county I live in that I can work out in. I actually spend more of my waking hours in the county I work in, and someone's going to tell me I can't belong to the team that practices on the campus where I work? Talk about unfair!

All this talk about what's fair or not fair with small and large teams reminds me of dog shows for kids where everyone wins a prize for best something. Also, "Swedish" competitions for children where "everyone wins." I understand the benefits of giving children (and adults!) the opportunity to participate and feel like they won something. On the other hand, attempting to "level the playing field" too much is a cruel joke to people who all of a sudden find that, for better or worse, much of our society and world operates in a competitive athmosphere. I met my "goals" at Nationals by bettering my times in each of the three events I swam. (This has been my first year of competition since 1968!) But I really came in 1st place by being, without a doubt, the fastest 57 year old bald guy with blue swim suit and initials EGH. (It took a few minutes to make sure that nobody who swam faster had my iniitials!) On the other hand, I'm very aware that Andrew Mc Pherson and Chuck Olsen were the real winners and that they did so because they were better technical swimmers, who were better trained and better conditioned and had made a much deeper commitment to the sport. This is really important to me, and I believe a lot of other people as well. The reason is that by respecting what the real winners have accomplished, I and others can concentrate on what WE have to do to improve, rather than moan that somehow the rules were not fair. I love US Masters Swimming. I returned home knowing that I bettered my best times, who the real winners were and giddy with inspiration to train smarter and harder. I already look forward to the 2006 Nationals!