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
1. Meg, the Championship Committee had this discussion about team scoring over multiple years and did not come up with a proposal that everyone could agree upon. Pacific, because it is a Rule now, could take it upon themselves to propose a rule change. If all the rules governing Nationals were decided by the Championsjip Committee, a person (or LMSC) who had a good idea would have to go through the Ch. Committee, rather than going through Rules. The Championship committee could then get bogged down on discussion of one item, an item which does not matter as much as other items in actually running the meet, or helping hosts run the meet. Keeping Article 104 in the RuleBook allows any LMSC or other committee to feel they have some power to affect that meet. Taking Article 104 out of the Rule Book would give Rules too little to do,I imagine, and, as noted above, tie up the Championship Committee in a discussion in which many people outside the committee would also like to participate.
Carolyn, we may just have to agree to disagree here! I think the Rules Committee is quite capable of coming up with a good rule. I did not have a problem with their portion of L02. The problem with Rules handling it is that they can only consider changes every other year--if we don't get it right in Rules in 2008, then we can't tweak it again till 2010. It is unfortunate that Championship has not been able to come to agreement, but I still think that's the proper venue for dealing with this. Maybe they're trying for unanimity, when that isn't possible? Maybe they're overcomplicating it? I don't know, since I haven't been able to attend a Championship meeting, except for the bid meeting, in the last few years.
2. At convention, the Rules Committee seemed to agree that a regional club was one where parts of the club competed under different names in regional meets, so I think we should keep that as part of the definition of the regional club division. Then we need to add some geographic wording so that we do not have a Holmes Lumberjack team (where members were recruited from throughout the US and did stay members of that club) from competing against clubs whose large majority live close enough to the club center to work out with the club at least occasionally.
When you have a regional team that breaks up into workout group competition within the LMSC, then that's easy. That's what we do in Kentucky, and I believe New England does that as well. But not all do that (maybe North Carolina, for example?). Clearly the Lumberjack team would have been a regional club, as would Team TYR. I agree that we need a geographic parameter, but am not crazy about defining a specific radius, mainly because it would be cumbersome to administer, but also because a reasonable radius would vary, depending on the part of the country. I think the wording should be flexible enough to allow whoever determines whether a team is regional or local to make a reasonable decision, and not be forced to pigeonhole a team into an inappropriate category.
3. In defenrence to Paul, I do not see him saying we should not have two divisions. I read him as saying both types of clubs are equally good, but they are different and it is fine to divide them for purposes of scoring only.
I agree with you here. I don't want to speak for Paul, but for myself, I do not object to two divisions, as long as within those divisions we have S-M-L.
1. Meg, the Championship Committee had this discussion about team scoring over multiple years and did not come up with a proposal that everyone could agree upon. Pacific, because it is a Rule now, could take it upon themselves to propose a rule change. If all the rules governing Nationals were decided by the Championsjip Committee, a person (or LMSC) who had a good idea would have to go through the Ch. Committee, rather than going through Rules. The Championship committee could then get bogged down on discussion of one item, an item which does not matter as much as other items in actually running the meet, or helping hosts run the meet. Keeping Article 104 in the RuleBook allows any LMSC or other committee to feel they have some power to affect that meet. Taking Article 104 out of the Rule Book would give Rules too little to do,I imagine, and, as noted above, tie up the Championship Committee in a discussion in which many people outside the committee would also like to participate.
Carolyn, we may just have to agree to disagree here! I think the Rules Committee is quite capable of coming up with a good rule. I did not have a problem with their portion of L02. The problem with Rules handling it is that they can only consider changes every other year--if we don't get it right in Rules in 2008, then we can't tweak it again till 2010. It is unfortunate that Championship has not been able to come to agreement, but I still think that's the proper venue for dealing with this. Maybe they're trying for unanimity, when that isn't possible? Maybe they're overcomplicating it? I don't know, since I haven't been able to attend a Championship meeting, except for the bid meeting, in the last few years.
2. At convention, the Rules Committee seemed to agree that a regional club was one where parts of the club competed under different names in regional meets, so I think we should keep that as part of the definition of the regional club division. Then we need to add some geographic wording so that we do not have a Holmes Lumberjack team (where members were recruited from throughout the US and did stay members of that club) from competing against clubs whose large majority live close enough to the club center to work out with the club at least occasionally.
When you have a regional team that breaks up into workout group competition within the LMSC, then that's easy. That's what we do in Kentucky, and I believe New England does that as well. But not all do that (maybe North Carolina, for example?). Clearly the Lumberjack team would have been a regional club, as would Team TYR. I agree that we need a geographic parameter, but am not crazy about defining a specific radius, mainly because it would be cumbersome to administer, but also because a reasonable radius would vary, depending on the part of the country. I think the wording should be flexible enough to allow whoever determines whether a team is regional or local to make a reasonable decision, and not be forced to pigeonhole a team into an inappropriate category.
3. In defenrence to Paul, I do not see him saying we should not have two divisions. I read him as saying both types of clubs are equally good, but they are different and it is fine to divide them for purposes of scoring only.
I agree with you here. I don't want to speak for Paul, but for myself, I do not object to two divisions, as long as within those divisions we have S-M-L.
