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.
Jeff,
Your ideas are good. It helps to hear different perspectives before we argue things out in championship committee meetings and present proposed changes at the annual convention.
One idea that occurred to me reading this thread is that if we could scratch swimmers that haven't gone through the arrival registration or checked-in for an event online, we could prevent a large number of no-shows. Typically, each national championship has 10% of the people enter the meet and never show up. If we could determine who these people are and remove them before running heat sheets, we could gain a great savings and come closer to meeting the goals of a number of the ideas posted here. Of course, this is probably not that easy to implement and would require creating heat sheets during the middle of the night. Still, something to think about.
Jeff,
Your ideas are good. It helps to hear different perspectives before we argue things out in championship committee meetings and present proposed changes at the annual convention.
One idea that occurred to me reading this thread is that if we could scratch swimmers that haven't gone through the arrival registration or checked-in for an event online, we could prevent a large number of no-shows. Typically, each national championship has 10% of the people enter the meet and never show up. If we could determine who these people are and remove them before running heat sheets, we could gain a great savings and come closer to meeting the goals of a number of the ideas posted here. Of course, this is probably not that easy to implement and would require creating heat sheets during the middle of the night. Still, something to think about.
