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
At this time, there is a subcommittee of the Championship Committee working on this proposal to make awards in two separate categories ("combined" club and "simple " club). Obviously, most of the convention delegates favored the idea and the nuances/definitions need to be better detailed. The Pacific proposal at convention did not pass because the Legislation committee felt it could be written better as to defining what is a combined vs. simple club. 64% of the delegates passed Pacific's amended proposal (amended in Rules), but due to Legislation's negative vote, for this proposal to go into effect, 66.7% of the delegates had to vote for it. Obviously, like many innovative proposals in the past, it takes more than one year of discussion to get the proposal to fit for the greater majority. To calm Betsy's fear "What will be next"-a fear that combined teamsmight not be able to swim relays together. There was never any intent by Pacific or anyone else to prevent combined teams from fielding relays.
I do like the idea of "Number of splashes" for size, if size is used, because that makes it less likely for a very competitive coach to discourage beginners from competing.
To answer Rob's question of Georgia vs. Pennypack, if Georgia Masters have more swimmers on their club than Pennypack, obviously Pennypack does a better job of encouraging their swimmers to compete. I am on the Club Development Task Force and much of what we learned from a questionnaire about clubs was how a strong local club encourages growth in USMS more than having one regional club for a large area.
Leianne and I are part of the Championship Committee subcommitee on the issue, and would welcome Pau (Are you still on the championship Committee) to give us your ideas. Any other ideas can continue on this forum or email Leianne or me--my email is carolynfboak@yahoo.com.
I like the idea of keeping it simple and the 2 division idea,unfortunately it isn't simple.Anyway you cut it the host club and it's neighbors will have an advantage.What would be slightly more complicated,but fairer would be some multiplier for distance.Getting 30 swimmers from FL to compete in OR(or vice versa) should count for something.
Team scores are only important to some people,but if it motivates them to get more people to Nats wonderful.Anything that encourages more swimmers is good for USMS.
Scotty..welcome to the forums..you picked a good one to jump into for your first time! Let me apologize as did make a mention of TOC in one of my posts suggesting that it would possibly be classified as a team that should be under "Open"...I really did mean to type TRC (Race Club)....even though I still have a recoding of you on my answering machine offering the big bucks to come swim with TOC! :)
Allen....isn't it true that in any sport the "home" team almost always has the advantage? I think we get so caught up in trying to create "fairness" when in sport there is ultimately always going to be things like "homefield" advantage, or home "refs" advantage...it does and should fall on each of us to step up/ramp up our efforts to get as many people on board to attend major meets as we can...and i again will use out efforts in Colorado as an example of what can happen bring LOTS of people into most nationals....
I'm now setting the same pace here in AZ (sorry Mel..not jumping ship to UCSB as JS is doing to Texas)...again using blackmail, bribery, outright threats and some cash on the line against other teams/swimmers (Evil Smith)!
Mel...also wanted to mention that do approach people/teams about hosting meets...often. Ask Schaffer & McConica about my visit to there stellar facility in Ojai a few weeks back....also, brought up 2010 SCY nationals to Mr. Shake down at the U of A who will have their incredible expansion complete in a little over 1 year!
It's one of the reasons I suggested a method of scoring by splashes (very early in this thread).Does this mean we will have large splash and small splash divisions?:drown: Will this be aggregated by splash on dive, stroke and turns? I usually make a big splash on my start and during turns, but not so much during the stroke phase.:fish2:
OK, I'm back. Tall Paul, you are always welcome to swim for us....move to SF and join the club first...:):thhbbb: S-M-L divisions keeps everything simple! No team definitions, no coaches playing dirty pool, and giving "all" teams a fair chance at winning a title. Right now, we don't have that scenario in USMS nationals scoring. Right now, if you have 345 swimmers at nationals, you win...big deal. I personally like the number of splashes and percentages of swimmers scoring in the top 10 but, that seems to be an overwhelming task for the host team. Have you noticed that there are not very many teams bidding on nationals (one for 2009)? Why do you think that is? And when they "do" bid, we create a FINA-type attitude. This is masters swimming. We have a mission statement. Are we living up to it? There is not a perfect solution, but, there is a better one than the one we have now. Change is needed or we will lose the participation that was once was up to approx. 2,000 swimmers for nationals.
Bring it....
Scott
I've deleted all the club abbreviations from this listing so that the discussion doesn't get reduced to picking on one team or another.
I could have removed them to avoid confusion, but I didn't. I like confusion.
Oh, c'mon Jim. You like confusion and I like picking. I think you should put the names back in.
JK.
If we are going to designate 2 types of teams for scoring purposes, I think Leianne's proposal is the simplest. If your registration card lists a workout group as well as your club, you are a regional team. If your registration card only lists your team, you are a club team. Some LMSCs consciously went to the regional team concept in order to compete at nationals. At local meets they use their workout group designation. Other LMSCs have a large club (perhaps with a regional sounding name), but have always operated as one team. They would be a club team.
The orignal proposal at convention was too complicated and from my point of view, not fair. This newer proposal seems much easier to determine. What am I missing?
(As many of you know, I swim for Virginia Masters, so I am not unbiased in this discussion. But then, who is?)
Betsy
Go work Jim. Now this is good information. It appears that there only a handful of regional teams and some do not have a lot of members. There are a lot of Club teams and most with less than 10 members would probably not compete at nationals. This is where we get stuck on how to define these teams at nationals. A simple you are regional and you are club isn't really much different than the S-M-L debate about arbitrary. Also defining a club gets pretty sticky as well, thus...our dilemma. How do we keep it simple and fair? Nothing is going to be perfect...percentages, keep it the same, S-M-L? Who has the best solution? Come on, you know you're out there...:):doh:
Cheers,
Scott:applaud:
Go work Jim. Now this is good information. It appears that there only a handful of regional teams and some do not have a lot of members. There are a lot of Club teams and most with less than 10 members would probably not compete at nationals. This is where we get stuck on how to define these teams at nationals. A simple you are regional and you are club isn't really much different than the S-M-L debate about arbitrary. Also defining a club gets pretty sticky as well, thus...our dilemma. How do we keep it simple and fair? Nothing is going to be perfect...percentages, keep it the same, S-M-L? Who has the best solution? Come on, you know you're out there...:):doh:
Cheers,
Scott:applaud:
Seeing the data Jim put together is making me rethink the issue a bit....basically I'm back into thinking forget trying to categorize Club vs. Regonal (or Open) and go back the the S,M,L...if increasing particpation is to be one of the primary goals and if a team has less than 25 members at least those 25 have a reasonable chance of winning a M's, W's and/or combined cahmpionship...
