first of all, congrats to the meet directors and all the volunteers on a job well done. so organized and efficient!! very impressive. the only thing i wish someone could explain to me is why the usms champ. committee changed the team scoring from large, medium and small team to clumping everyone in the same category. seems extremely unfair to have what i call "real teams" competing against state mega teams. there is no possibility for "real teams" to ever come close to competing against them. if you are going to give team awards at the end of the meet, is there any way you can do it fairly? our team is extremely proud to have gotten as many team members as we did to go to natls. (most of them for the first time), but unfortunately they were very disillusioned (as was i) with the idea that we would be competing against state teams. as one of the coaches i didn't have an explanation. even though we were very proud of our 7th place finish in men's division, and our 12th place in combined, we were only one of a few "real teams" in the top ten. would appreciate responses. maybe even someone from the champ.committee could explain how they felt this scoring system would be more fair to the majority of swimmers. then i can pass it along to my teammates.. i don't want them to be so disillusioned that they lose interest in attending any future natls. thanks
Since I posted my last message early this morning, I've been thinking about team scoring. At first I thought perhaps we should base the grouping on team membership. That would be an incentive for teams to encourage participation. However, the location of nationals has the biggest impact on how many attend from a team. On the east coast, my team has had as many as 100 (Baltimore LC) and usually averages around 35 or so. In Federal Way, we had 11. If we had been in a small team category, we would probably have entered more relays.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of basing the team category on number of "splashes" or number of events members of the team have entered. People who enter only for the distance day or people who can only enter 3 would count in proportion to how many events they entered. It might even keep me from scratching some events!
Since I posted my last message early this morning, I've been thinking about team scoring. At first I thought perhaps we should base the grouping on team membership. That would be an incentive for teams to encourage participation. However, the location of nationals has the biggest impact on how many attend from a team. On the east coast, my team has had as many as 100 (Baltimore LC) and usually averages around 35 or so. In Federal Way, we had 11. If we had been in a small team category, we would probably have entered more relays.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of basing the team category on number of "splashes" or number of events members of the team have entered. People who enter only for the distance day or people who can only enter 3 would count in proportion to how many events they entered. It might even keep me from scratching some events!
