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
Now, this is a good topic of discussion!
I concur with a little bit of everyone’s point of view, though Rob expressed it best by saying “…the fundamental question…is what do we need to do to best align with the USMS mission and objectives?”
What are these objectives and are these objectives different depending on the location and scope of the event? The good folks in the Pacific Northwest certainly know that they have a LMSC championship with a points competition scored for workout groups (with S/M/L divisions, not divided by sex), a zone championship with no team scoring at all, and a national championship scored for USMS-registered clubs (divided by sex & combined). (Like Peter, I have seen no observable suffering with this arrangement.)
I humbly suggest that one of the biggest objectives of having team scoring is to encourage more swimmers to participate in the event. Certainly, team scoring fosters other positive things (e.g. competitive spirit and group pride), but an objective long sought after by many who write here is to provide an incentive to workout swimmers to enter the meet environment. It’s clear from the posts here that there are some swimmers for whom team scoring is the one thing that gets them to swim in a meet (specifically the LMSC championships meets at New England, Pacific, SPMA and PNA…the largest meets in the country outside of nationals/worlds), and perhaps it’s the only meet of they entire year that they do swim. I don’t believe that the having a scoring system encourages large numbers of non-regular meet swimmers to participate, but it does bring in some.
At nationals, I think having a team competition has less of an effect, if not a negligible one, in bringing in the infrequent competitor to the meet compared to LMSC & zone championships. The time standards have an impact in this, though I suspect the large PNA contingent at SCY nationals this year was more encouraged to enter the meet because it was close to home, and less because of the high potential to be associated with the likely national championship club. Similarly, I suspect a large majority of swimmers from outside of Washington state who went to nationals would still have gone to Federal Way if there was no team scoring. I do not suggest that competitive spirit and pride in your team/club are not important or valued (clearly many of you value it!), but that it is less important than other factors that bring swimmers to nationals (pool?, location?, time of year?, quality of swimming?, etc?)
So then if a team competition at nationals isn’t going to bring in the casual competitor, the only reasons to have one are for club pride and competitive spirit. If that is true, then the discussions about how to foster or concentrate that spirit are going to go on forever. There will be arguments for ages about whether it is more important to, say, recognize Walnut Creek Masters as the #1 medium-sized team rather than the #4 overall team…or why the 11th-place medium-sized team gets less (or no) recognition than the 1st-place small team because the medium team had one more swimmer. In this respect, I lean a little towards the viewpoint of my Canadian friend. Canadian nationals and the NW zone meet have not, and will not, become second-class events because of a lack of team scoring. Is team scoring an essential element of nationals?
In the end, this subject does go back to Rob’s fundamental question…as does the issue of defining “clubs” and “teams”. Does team scoring at (particular?) swim meets meet USMS objectives? Do our current definitions or policies regarding clubs meet USMS objectives? (Sounds like the beginning of another thread…)
Now, this is a good topic of discussion!
I concur with a little bit of everyone’s point of view, though Rob expressed it best by saying “…the fundamental question…is what do we need to do to best align with the USMS mission and objectives?”
What are these objectives and are these objectives different depending on the location and scope of the event? The good folks in the Pacific Northwest certainly know that they have a LMSC championship with a points competition scored for workout groups (with S/M/L divisions, not divided by sex), a zone championship with no team scoring at all, and a national championship scored for USMS-registered clubs (divided by sex & combined). (Like Peter, I have seen no observable suffering with this arrangement.)
I humbly suggest that one of the biggest objectives of having team scoring is to encourage more swimmers to participate in the event. Certainly, team scoring fosters other positive things (e.g. competitive spirit and group pride), but an objective long sought after by many who write here is to provide an incentive to workout swimmers to enter the meet environment. It’s clear from the posts here that there are some swimmers for whom team scoring is the one thing that gets them to swim in a meet (specifically the LMSC championships meets at New England, Pacific, SPMA and PNA…the largest meets in the country outside of nationals/worlds), and perhaps it’s the only meet of they entire year that they do swim. I don’t believe that the having a scoring system encourages large numbers of non-regular meet swimmers to participate, but it does bring in some.
At nationals, I think having a team competition has less of an effect, if not a negligible one, in bringing in the infrequent competitor to the meet compared to LMSC & zone championships. The time standards have an impact in this, though I suspect the large PNA contingent at SCY nationals this year was more encouraged to enter the meet because it was close to home, and less because of the high potential to be associated with the likely national championship club. Similarly, I suspect a large majority of swimmers from outside of Washington state who went to nationals would still have gone to Federal Way if there was no team scoring. I do not suggest that competitive spirit and pride in your team/club are not important or valued (clearly many of you value it!), but that it is less important than other factors that bring swimmers to nationals (pool?, location?, time of year?, quality of swimming?, etc?)
So then if a team competition at nationals isn’t going to bring in the casual competitor, the only reasons to have one are for club pride and competitive spirit. If that is true, then the discussions about how to foster or concentrate that spirit are going to go on forever. There will be arguments for ages about whether it is more important to, say, recognize Walnut Creek Masters as the #1 medium-sized team rather than the #4 overall team…or why the 11th-place medium-sized team gets less (or no) recognition than the 1st-place small team because the medium team had one more swimmer. In this respect, I lean a little towards the viewpoint of my Canadian friend. Canadian nationals and the NW zone meet have not, and will not, become second-class events because of a lack of team scoring. Is team scoring an essential element of nationals?
In the end, this subject does go back to Rob’s fundamental question…as does the issue of defining “clubs” and “teams”. Does team scoring at (particular?) swim meets meet USMS objectives? Do our current definitions or policies regarding clubs meet USMS objectives? (Sounds like the beginning of another thread…)
