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 dorothyrde
Phil, I am that person you hand those check in sheets to that magically give you the printed heat sheet! It is a highly stressful 45 minutes, and takes all of my concentration to make sure I do it correctly(while 10 people are trying to ask me questions, I actually post people around me to field them so I can get it done!).
Boy, ain't that the truth!!!
For a meet as large as this, it would definately take longer than 45, but if you could also have a pre-positive check in for people who know say the week before, that cuts down on the time also. This last summer meet, I let coaches know we would be preseeding the 400 Im on Friday night and if they knew of swimmers that would not be there, let me know by 9pm Thursday. They were very co-operative, and not only let me know those scratches, but others as well, which made each day a little easier.
I think that age group is easier because there is a central person(the coach), per team as a contact. Masters would be harder because it is more each to his/her own.
That is very true, almost all of them handle check in's on their own, and even when a coach checks them in, often they come and ask questions to double check.
The day for the checkin of the 1500 we decided to make thje laptop available at the checkin so everyone is checked in online. Having a mix of paper checkins and online checkins added an extra step of merging the databases, which wasn't as smooth as it is supposed to be (by the book)
Originally posted by dorothyrde
Phil, I am that person you hand those check in sheets to that magically give you the printed heat sheet! It is a highly stressful 45 minutes, and takes all of my concentration to make sure I do it correctly(while 10 people are trying to ask me questions, I actually post people around me to field them so I can get it done!).
Boy, ain't that the truth!!!
For a meet as large as this, it would definately take longer than 45, but if you could also have a pre-positive check in for people who know say the week before, that cuts down on the time also. This last summer meet, I let coaches know we would be preseeding the 400 Im on Friday night and if they knew of swimmers that would not be there, let me know by 9pm Thursday. They were very co-operative, and not only let me know those scratches, but others as well, which made each day a little easier.
I think that age group is easier because there is a central person(the coach), per team as a contact. Masters would be harder because it is more each to his/her own.
That is very true, almost all of them handle check in's on their own, and even when a coach checks them in, often they come and ask questions to double check.
The day for the checkin of the 1500 we decided to make thje laptop available at the checkin so everyone is checked in online. Having a mix of paper checkins and online checkins added an extra step of merging the databases, which wasn't as smooth as it is supposed to be (by the book)
