Mission Viejo had very good facilities, great weather, superb organization, and the best hosts. Overall a great meet.
However, as commented in another thread, there were lots of no shows. In four of five events I had an empty lane next to me. This is not the best racing environment, and it makes the meet last longer than necessary. I am not critical of the people that did not show up -- I was one of them on Thursday, as an emergency at work made me arrive a day late.
On deck seeding would be a simple and easy solution.
Evidently some people like to know a day or days in advance who will swim in their heat. However, the way it worked for me, I found out as I walked up to the block who would *not* be swimming. *That's* lots of opportunity to get psyched! (not)
I don't think the way this meet was seeded (check in for distance events, advanced seeding for the other events) was a very good compromise. This was my first non-deck seeded masters meet, and I did not enjoy that aspect of it.
Typically, we find at nationals there is a high incedent of no shows as it gets closer to flight times. The 200 free on Sunday at Mission Viejo is an example of this.
A few thoughts on totally deck seeding a meet versus particially deck seeding.
If we require swimmers to check in one hour before the race (as we have done in the past), it would eliminate most of the empty lanes. However, there are some tradeoffs. You will not give the first heats much warm up time. We found they typically only had a few minutes from the time we were able to post the seedings to when they swam. Also, you don't know where people are swimming. For many of us, swimming is part competitive, part social.
So, at the 2003 nationals in Tempe, we tried a compromise. Check-in for all events the day before. This allowed us time to seed the meet in a less hurried fashion than one hour before. It did require the admin staff to stay late. At the 2003 meet, we typically didn't leave before 9:00 pm. That was tough when we also arrived at 5:00 am each day. The advantages - it gave us heat sheets. The disadvantages - there were more no shows than if we did it the day of. Also, if you missed signing in, you were out for the entire day, not just one event.
After studying the data for a while, we discovered that we saved about 10% by deck seeding an event. Wow, that is a lot. Maybe. The 50's take about a half an hour. So we saved 3 minutes for each of those that we deck seeded. That got us thinking that maybe deck seeding wasn't necessary for all events. The last few nationals have not been so big that we needed every minute of time savings that we could get. So, we tried deck seeding only the distance races. The advantages - simplier process for swimmers. It is also much easier on the admin staff. Now we only have to seed one event each day. We are not staying until 9:00 pm anymore. If a swimmer misses checking in, they may still get to swim some on that day. The disadvantages - there are more empty lanes. The meet may run a few minutes longer.
Why deck seeding doesn't always speed meets up? It does remove empty lanes in the middle of the pool. However, if there are 8 swimmers in an age group and 2 don't check in, we still swim the heat, now there are just 6 swimmers in it. Because we seed by age group, removing no shows does not mean we gain time in all cases. Only if the heat drops under 4 swimmers would it matter.
If an efficient meet is what we are after, we should seed only by time. Better yet, we should seed by time and mix the genders. We currently only do that in distance events. However, nationals is a complex system of tradeoffs. We like to swim by age group when feasable, so we accept an less efficient meet for the opportunity. We also want to meet to be user friendly. Thus we don't deck seed everything and we provide heat sheets. The championship committee tries to balance all of the different desires to create a competitive and fun meet.
Typically, we find at nationals there is a high incedent of no shows as it gets closer to flight times. The 200 free on Sunday at Mission Viejo is an example of this.
A few thoughts on totally deck seeding a meet versus particially deck seeding.
If we require swimmers to check in one hour before the race (as we have done in the past), it would eliminate most of the empty lanes. However, there are some tradeoffs. You will not give the first heats much warm up time. We found they typically only had a few minutes from the time we were able to post the seedings to when they swam. Also, you don't know where people are swimming. For many of us, swimming is part competitive, part social.
So, at the 2003 nationals in Tempe, we tried a compromise. Check-in for all events the day before. This allowed us time to seed the meet in a less hurried fashion than one hour before. It did require the admin staff to stay late. At the 2003 meet, we typically didn't leave before 9:00 pm. That was tough when we also arrived at 5:00 am each day. The advantages - it gave us heat sheets. The disadvantages - there were more no shows than if we did it the day of. Also, if you missed signing in, you were out for the entire day, not just one event.
After studying the data for a while, we discovered that we saved about 10% by deck seeding an event. Wow, that is a lot. Maybe. The 50's take about a half an hour. So we saved 3 minutes for each of those that we deck seeded. That got us thinking that maybe deck seeding wasn't necessary for all events. The last few nationals have not been so big that we needed every minute of time savings that we could get. So, we tried deck seeding only the distance races. The advantages - simplier process for swimmers. It is also much easier on the admin staff. Now we only have to seed one event each day. We are not staying until 9:00 pm anymore. If a swimmer misses checking in, they may still get to swim some on that day. The disadvantages - there are more empty lanes. The meet may run a few minutes longer.
Why deck seeding doesn't always speed meets up? It does remove empty lanes in the middle of the pool. However, if there are 8 swimmers in an age group and 2 don't check in, we still swim the heat, now there are just 6 swimmers in it. Because we seed by age group, removing no shows does not mean we gain time in all cases. Only if the heat drops under 4 swimmers would it matter.
If an efficient meet is what we are after, we should seed only by time. Better yet, we should seed by time and mix the genders. We currently only do that in distance events. However, nationals is a complex system of tradeoffs. We like to swim by age group when feasable, so we accept an less efficient meet for the opportunity. We also want to meet to be user friendly. Thus we don't deck seed everything and we provide heat sheets. The championship committee tries to balance all of the different desires to create a competitive and fun meet.
