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 Phil Arcuni
A person removes the names not checked and prints the sheets -- voila! finished before the event and no late nights. Perhaps they used a different system at MV.
We used the same system.
Ithink what you're overlooking is the time factor to look through some 500 names. Even if it takes you 1/4 of a second to scan through each, it adds up to 2 hours of what you're claiming is a voila! Implying that it happens at the push of a button.
AND there's no room for error here, you can't accidentally remove someone's name, so you can't really take shortcuts or rush through things.
Also, in age group meets you don't get 500 kids swimming one event.
As far as the heat sheets being available ahead of time, in our case in the meet program, I was getting very positive feedback about that choice. Lot of smiles at the mention of heat-sheets in the program.
And I was the one handing out the program and explaining registation and checkin procedures to people.
Most people were really happy that once they went through the registration all they had to do is look up their heat and lane and show up at the block. No additional pressure of checking in for the events, except for distance.
Your point of view that you don't care a whole lot about having the heats sheets seems to be in a minority.
As a matter of fact our meet administrators, after seeding the 1500 have gone through the trouble of distributing the heat sheets that evening to the hotels where we knew swimmers were staying. Large number of those gave us a feedback about how comforting it was to wake up in the morning and find the heat sheets on your doorstep.
Sitting in the administration areas, one of the most frequently asked question is WHEN the heat sheets will be available, and where they are.
Not so much at the kids meets, since the coaches tend to get the feedback from the admin, and take care of their swimmers being in line.
In masters it's different, most swimmers are there fending for themselves, without the coach, and not always familiar with the rules and minutia of meet administration, not to the extent most coaches know the process.
Originally posted by Phil Arcuni
A person removes the names not checked and prints the sheets -- voila! finished before the event and no late nights. Perhaps they used a different system at MV.
We used the same system.
Ithink what you're overlooking is the time factor to look through some 500 names. Even if it takes you 1/4 of a second to scan through each, it adds up to 2 hours of what you're claiming is a voila! Implying that it happens at the push of a button.
AND there's no room for error here, you can't accidentally remove someone's name, so you can't really take shortcuts or rush through things.
Also, in age group meets you don't get 500 kids swimming one event.
As far as the heat sheets being available ahead of time, in our case in the meet program, I was getting very positive feedback about that choice. Lot of smiles at the mention of heat-sheets in the program.
And I was the one handing out the program and explaining registation and checkin procedures to people.
Most people were really happy that once they went through the registration all they had to do is look up their heat and lane and show up at the block. No additional pressure of checking in for the events, except for distance.
Your point of view that you don't care a whole lot about having the heats sheets seems to be in a minority.
As a matter of fact our meet administrators, after seeding the 1500 have gone through the trouble of distributing the heat sheets that evening to the hotels where we knew swimmers were staying. Large number of those gave us a feedback about how comforting it was to wake up in the morning and find the heat sheets on your doorstep.
Sitting in the administration areas, one of the most frequently asked question is WHEN the heat sheets will be available, and where they are.
Not so much at the kids meets, since the coaches tend to get the feedback from the admin, and take care of their swimmers being in line.
In masters it's different, most swimmers are there fending for themselves, without the coach, and not always familiar with the rules and minutia of meet administration, not to the extent most coaches know the process.