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.
Originally posted by Conniekat8
Well, wheter you see it or not, I was one of those admin people staying up late, just dealing with deck entered relays and protests, getting the results out, data entered, heat sheets printed out and posted for the next day.
The days were ending between 3 and 6 PM, and administration, volunteers and the cleanup crew were leaving the pool 4 hours after that, and coming to the pool about an hour before everyone. Admin days ran from 5AM till 11PM every day.
That's without deck seeding the 50's, 100's and 200's.
I don't see how one could take a tally of everyone (few hundred people) entered (checked in for) a 50 free (for example) and not hold up the meet if you don't close the check in the night before.
Especially if that happens to be the first event.
Sure, you could have more people doing the data entry, but you still have to take time on the QC.
As for the checking in, people get confused with just one check-in deadline per day, can you imagine the confusion if you told people that the check in for each event closes two hours priror to that event???
Then you have to allow some time to clear problems and protests... there's always those.
Also, I worked or sectional and JO meets which are pretty big in with respect to the swimmer count.
You don't get 30, 40 or 50 heats of one event, like you do in masters. It's a different animal.
I remember Indy last year, I think there was 90+ heats of just men's free. That's 90*8 people... That's 720 names that one has to make sure are checked in. Even if it takes you half a second per swimmer to check them in or scratch them, that takes some time.
No, the whole session closes 45 minutes prior to the meet start. We put out checkin sheets that list the names of the swimmers and their events, and they circle their names and the events they will be swimming. Then you go through and scratch and seed prior to the meet starting. I have been setting up and adminning meets for 10 years, and this is how we have always done it. This summer, to try to take some of the stress off of getting the big meet started, we preseeded the first 2 events of each session. I asked for scratches the day before, by a certain time.
Now with championship meets, it is always run preseeded, with scratches due the night before at a predetermined time, and all the meet is seeded the night before after the scratches.
Also, these are age group meets, and I think that it is a different flavor to run. They have a coach telling them to be there at a certain time, and all the swimmers arrive usually on time. With Masters, there is a little more.....coming and going.
Connie, one more edit. I did not mean to critisize how it was done, I did not even go. Most comments of the meet were very favorable, so I would say you all did a very good job running the meet. Just like the conversation of seeding by age or seeding by time, there are good arguements on both sides, and no true correct way.
Originally posted by Conniekat8
Well, wheter you see it or not, I was one of those admin people staying up late, just dealing with deck entered relays and protests, getting the results out, data entered, heat sheets printed out and posted for the next day.
The days were ending between 3 and 6 PM, and administration, volunteers and the cleanup crew were leaving the pool 4 hours after that, and coming to the pool about an hour before everyone. Admin days ran from 5AM till 11PM every day.
That's without deck seeding the 50's, 100's and 200's.
I don't see how one could take a tally of everyone (few hundred people) entered (checked in for) a 50 free (for example) and not hold up the meet if you don't close the check in the night before.
Especially if that happens to be the first event.
Sure, you could have more people doing the data entry, but you still have to take time on the QC.
As for the checking in, people get confused with just one check-in deadline per day, can you imagine the confusion if you told people that the check in for each event closes two hours priror to that event???
Then you have to allow some time to clear problems and protests... there's always those.
Also, I worked or sectional and JO meets which are pretty big in with respect to the swimmer count.
You don't get 30, 40 or 50 heats of one event, like you do in masters. It's a different animal.
I remember Indy last year, I think there was 90+ heats of just men's free. That's 90*8 people... That's 720 names that one has to make sure are checked in. Even if it takes you half a second per swimmer to check them in or scratch them, that takes some time.
No, the whole session closes 45 minutes prior to the meet start. We put out checkin sheets that list the names of the swimmers and their events, and they circle their names and the events they will be swimming. Then you go through and scratch and seed prior to the meet starting. I have been setting up and adminning meets for 10 years, and this is how we have always done it. This summer, to try to take some of the stress off of getting the big meet started, we preseeded the first 2 events of each session. I asked for scratches the day before, by a certain time.
Now with championship meets, it is always run preseeded, with scratches due the night before at a predetermined time, and all the meet is seeded the night before after the scratches.
Also, these are age group meets, and I think that it is a different flavor to run. They have a coach telling them to be there at a certain time, and all the swimmers arrive usually on time. With Masters, there is a little more.....coming and going.
Connie, one more edit. I did not mean to critisize how it was done, I did not even go. Most comments of the meet were very favorable, so I would say you all did a very good job running the meet. Just like the conversation of seeding by age or seeding by time, there are good arguements on both sides, and no true correct way.
