team scoring

Karen, I understand that any size division cutoff would be made after the close of entries, but my concern rests on the assumption that people would be able to predict with reasonable certainty where that cutoff is. I could be wrong here, (and any insight about the numbers from 2001-2004 are appreciated) but it seems that if, for example, the cutoff from small to medium teams over the years is between 12-15, and a team wanted to try to win the small team division, then they would bring 12 swimmers. To be clear, I am NOT advocating discouraging (or preventing, if that's possible) swimmers from attending Nationals in order to remain in a smaller size division. However, I am pointing out that it may very well happen - this is the reality of the situation and from what I've heard, this is a big part of why the S/M/L scoring method was stopped. What I said is that I would be in a "predicament" if that were the case. Of course I want to travel with all my friends to wherever Nationals may be, but there's also a part of me that wants to win (I'm admittedly competitive).

Alrighty...I agree with Karen Duggan 100%! Walnnut Creek is an extended family. The Olympic Club is an extended family. We train together and race together. We encourage "everyone" to participate and have adopted members along the way to join us for social activities..."especially at nationals"...anyone want to chime in hear?...Mark G., Randy N., Jill G., Laura W., etc., etc., ect. At the end of the day, it is NOT THE TIME YOU DID...IT IS THE TIME YOU HAD!!! Scott:groovy: Scott...with all due respect I would challenge you on the "closeness" if you will of what you describe at WCM and TOC and that of CMS. Although I no longer live in CO I was part of that team for many years and feel VERY proud of what we accomplished at meets, the times we organized national team training sessions, how hard we partied afterwards, how we stay in touch regardless of distance and what a great job we did of pulling people out of the woodwork to be part of the "team". I see a lot of you writing about how great it is to be part of a workout group...Karen, I've swam with WCM and yes Kerry does an outstanding job and you have wonderful people there...but I would argue a vast majority of that group does not share the common interest of competition that our "regional" club at CMS (and AZ will soon) that kept us all sharing daily emails, phone calls, dinners on weekends, occasional workouts, etc. Unless you have lived as part of a regional team I would challenge you to step back from the "holier than thou" attitude that some of you are fostering about being a "real team" because you "train" together...sorry but sharing a pool doesn't bring you closer...sharing a goal and working towards it as a group no matter what the geographical differences is far more of a "glue" than pool time.... If you don't believe me it PM me and I'll share some of the daily communication that is going on right now between some of us all over the country rallying folks to get ready for Austin!

It is ludicrous that 15 or 16 people, simply because they were placed on the Championship Committee, should decide such an issue.So if it is ludicrous that 15 or 16 people should decide such an issue, then what is the number that it becomes plausible? 20? 50? 100? 200? The US Supreme Court makes decisions almost as weighty as team scoring with a committee of only 9 members. And while some of their decisions, in my opinion , are ludicrous they seem to be, on a whole , an effective decision making committee. This is in part due to the fact that they meet more than once a year and in part due to the fact that qualified people are assigned to this committee. Based in what is being said here, a number of people are at least mildly interested in changing how we tabulate scores at nationals. What is ludicrous is we only allow ourselves one shot per year to address customer satisfaction. maybe the delegates felt those ideas were in good hands and trusted they were being taken care of. Shouldn’t we be able to extend this same courtesy to the Championship Committee?

Paul, I will assume (there I go again!) that you are not suggesting that I have a holier than thou attitude. I would think you know me well enough to know that is not me, nor is it my intent. As you are writing from a regional team perspective I am writing from a team perspective. I will respectfully disagree that a pool doesn't make a team. The heck it doesn't. I can go into any one of five workouts during the day and know at least half the people working out! And I've been on the one day a week plan for the past 8 months! The people I haven't met at the pool, I've met at meets. (I really try to avoid that 5:30am group! They're grumpy! They get in, get'rdone, and get out to go to work. But I digress.) It also seems to me that while you've swam with us a handful of times (and you are always welcome) that you are not at all qualified to have an opinion that a "vast majority of our team does not share an interest in competition." Because I actually know most of my teammates very well, I can tell you flat out that you're wrong. Many don't compete at Nationals for all of the same reasons most Masters don't compete: time, money, family. If you'll recall all of the Nationals in Santa Clara we had a tremendous showing. It was an hour away, cheap (no hotels, airfare, or meals), and family could even come watch. Plus, I know you've swum in college, and probably age-group although I don't know that for sure. Are you going to tell me that a college team that trained in different states and in different pools with different coaches has the same camraderie as the college team that trains on the same campus? Come on. If that's the case, what's the point of swimming for a college? College students could just take classes via the Internet. Natalie Coughlin could have lived in say, Florida, took classes at Cal via the Internet, trained in FL, and swam for CAL! College swimmers don't care about swim team pride, do they? Ridiculous. Just look at this forum alone. How many UT swimmers are out there, anyway? You all are just as feisty as ever regarding UT. Same thing with USMS teams (like WCM). The point is: teams (college and otherwise) do swim in the same pool! I will not argue (as that would be absurd because I don't know) that people are planning to meet in Austin, swimming for CMS, and that they're getting pumped communicating regularly, etc... however, no matter the circumstances, you CANNOT convince me that a group that actually gets in the same pool day in and day out TOGETHER, is the same kind of a team that CMS is. They are different, and that is a fact. So, someone asked or didn't (!), my definition of a club team: a team where the registered members list the club team as their team, and don't swim under any other name for any other meets (including Nationals). A club team does not need to combine with any other team to form relays. A club team is run by one or more coaches out of one facility in one city. That is my definition. And, IMHO regarding USMS, if you're not a club team, you are a regional team. Oh, and a club team doesn't need to pull anybody out of the woodwork. You simply look at the next lane over and say, "Hey, are going to Nationals?"

Yes, the S/M/L scoring system was done away with for those 2 reasons: (1) the arbitrary cutoffs left some teams feeling like they got the short end of the stick, and (2) it resulted in discouraging participation. Regardless of how you divide the size categories you're going to have someone upset and the complaining will continue on this forum. (Complaining is probably not the right word but you get what I'm saying.) Going with the Keep It Simple idea, that's why I think the straight Regional/Club method works best and everyone is enocuraged to attend and no one feels like their team was screwed. I like the idea of electronic certificates to keep costs down if that's really an issue. If people don't like that, then I think we wouldn't have to go all the way from 1st to 10th since there are 2 categories.

As I stated before, I do not think that ANY committee (Rules, Legislation or Championship) should determine the method of scoring. This isssue is raises too much debate. Look at this forum and the other ones that are linked to it. Even before this forum thread, there are three other links from 2004-2005 that extensively discuss this issue (here is the first link, the other links are on the first page of this thread): forums.usms.org/showthread.php I think that we need to deal with the current landscape as it is now (regional teams and club teams), because we will not be changing them any time soon -- these are already established methods for setting up swim programs. What we need to do is make the slope of the playing field "less steep", as noted in a previous post-- because no scoring system will be perfect. If that is done by going back to SML, or to regional/club divisions, including number of swims, and geographic limitations, that is great. Given the comments on all these forum threads, I think that if a smaller team felt that it could actually achieve a win, then the participant that is on the fence (about spending the money or taking the vacation time to attend Nationals) would be more likely to go. If the goal is to increase attendance, then I think that segmenting the scoring divisions would help. One of the concerns expressed in the prior posts under the other threads is that by scoring only the top ten teams, that would encourage formation of regional teams. I think that has happened. Another statement was that the teams that won the small divisions under the old method would most likely be in the top ten teams. Here are the teams that won in the Small Team divisions for SCY Nationals 2001-2004 (by women, men and combined scores): 2001: W Stanford, TAM, El Segundo M Team Texas, Ventura, San Diego C San Diego, Tamalpais, El Segundo 2002: W DC Masters, Multnomah, Pirate Masters M City of Las Vegas, Ventura, Illinois C Las Vegas, Ojai Santa Barbara, Multnomah 2003: W TOC, NEM, Oregon, M Gold, NC, Ancient Mariners C Virginia, Gold, UCSB 2004: W NEM, NC, Dallas M Las Vegas, TAM, GAJA C NEM, NC, PNA Since the scoring change in 2004, of the "small teams" listed above, only North Carolina, NEM, Illinois, Oregon, PNA, San Diego ("regional " clubs) and Virginia have scored in the top ten at SCY Nationals. I do not see any of the other teams (primarily "club" teams) listed in the top ten. The only "club teams" in the top ten for SCY 2005-2007 have been Fort Lauderdale, Florida Maverick, the Olympic Club, the Woodlands, and Walnut Creek. Given the dissatisfaction with the current scoring system (which has only been in place for a couple years), maybe any change in scoring needs to have a sunset period, where it applies for 3 years after approval by HOD, and then if not confirmed again by HOD, it will expire and you are back to the previous scoring method (the top ten teams). If it is confirmed again by HOD after three years, then that is the scoring method. That way you are not locked in to a scoring system, and can road test it. Leianne

Alrighty...I agree with Karen Duggan 100%! Walnnut Creek is an extended family. The Olympic Club is an extended family. We train together and race together. We encourage "everyone" to participate and have adopted members along the way to join us for social activities..."especially at nationals"...anyone want to chime in hear?...Mark G., Randy N., Jill G., Laura W., etc., etc., ect. At the end of the day, it is NOT THE TIME YOU DID...IT IS THE TIME YOU HAD!!! Scott:groovy:

Yes, the nuclear and extended family analogy is great! And Carolyn sums up where we currently stand on this topic very well. So, how do you define a regional team and a club team? I have a question - in how many LMSCs do they list both a workout group and a team on their registration card? It almost seems like that would be too easy. Also, is that methon of definition under inclusive? I'm sure it wouldn't be over inclusive. And specifically, how does it work in Florida for Gold Coast (is that the team with various "workout groups"?) It would be nice to keep it simple, but we also need to make sure that any "regional" teams WITHIN an LMSC (in addition to those teams that ARE the entire LMSC) are included in the regional team category. I know there was language in one proposal that spoke of "if a team was more the 45% of the LMSC..." That honestly confused me a bit, but I'm sure whoever wrote it had good reason. Can someone explain to me the dynamics of this and offer different definitions? Thanks in advance.

I will admit that we are extremely lucky to live where we do, in that swimming is a very popular sport around here (mostly during the summer though). Kerry is an A1 coach, and our assistants are great too. Because we do all work out at one facility it easily forges that day to day camraderie, etc. Yes, you ARE lucky! You live in a great part of the country, have many great facilities, and most important, you do have a great coach. Kerry probably doesn't know this, but he has indirectly helped my distance freestyle a great deal! A swimmer who shall not be named has shared some of his workouts with me, and they have made a ton of difference! It seems to me at this point that the most forward direction would be to define a club team. If it's not a club team then it's a regional team. Whether there is SML I really don't care, but I do think that the club and regional need to be separated. Agreed, but the terminology needs tweaking. Swim Kentucky is a club too. It may seem like semantics to some, but by calling your team a club team, and mine something else, it implies that yours is the real deal and mine is not. Not sure this is as important to others as it is to me. And not sure we will ever all agree on the terminology. Maybe "local" vs. "regional"? One more thought I had last night while trying to fall asleep: Why are the Regional teams "against" two separate divisions at Nationals? Why do they care? If anything, taking out WCM and TOC, and whatever other club team places in the TT at Nationals, would leave room for two more Regional teams to be in the Top Ten. And conversely, having a club team division would get at least 5 more club teams into a Top 10. We are NOT against separate divisions! That's what I've been trying to say. What I didn't want to see happen was having to go up against, say, PNA when Nationals are in Federal Way, and we only had 7 swimmers there and they had 150. If we go with separate divisions, and then S-M-L within them, then I'm happy enough. Then we are competing against other small regional teams, and we have a fair shot. I think there's actually a fair amount of agreement here on what we want to do. Just not as much agreement on definitions and implementation.

Hi, The original submission of L2 by Pacific included a definition of a regional team which everyone said was too complicated. It was trying to address the idea that the club drew from a large amount of the swimmers in the LMSC region and did not have common management (single board of directors, one set of coaches, one set of pools), but rather was a group of independent entities coming together for competition at Nationals or other meets outside thier LMSC. Here is what was included in the original L2 submission: "For competition at National Championship Meets, a “Regional Team” will consist of those meet entrants that are registered with a club that (i) includes 40% or more of the LMSC’s registered members, and (ii) does not have centralized management and a single operating account to pay coaches and other expenses such as pool rental fees." Given the discussions on this forum, maybe we should see if we can define what is a "local" team as opposed to deciding what is a "regional" team. Let's try to see beyond the words that are used in this discussion, because if we get the principles down, then we can decide on what terms to use in presenting a proposal to the Rules Committee. I think the definition of Regional team is drafted broadly enough to cover the regional teams (like GAJA in Georgia and Metro in New York) that do not include all swimmers in their LMSC, but I am not sure we will be able to set up a definition for local clubs that would work. If we can set up a workable definition, then a club would fall in to one category or the other for its competition at Nationals. Assuming a local and regional team division, then maybe a definition of a local team could be as follows: "LOCAL CLUB DIVISION. A club will compete at a National Championship meet in the local club division if it meets the following conditions: (i) its members live in a limited geographic area (with no more than 10% of its members residing outside the LMSC where the club's address is located); and (ii) it has a single board of directors or other management structure that is responsible for acquiring facilities and paying coaching staff from the club's operating budget." This is a redraft of the concepts originally submitted, but it does cover the idea of small geographic draw for members, and single management of the swimmers activities, coaches, dues and facilities.....I do not know if this definition will work, as I do not know how the regional teams with workout groups do their operations, and whether each workout group operates and budgets money separately for their pools and coaches. Please feel free to edit -- the idea is to come up with a workable definition.....no pride of authorship here! Leianne ^^^