team scoring

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!

Betsy I dont understand where you are going with basing the team championship on the number of slashes. The team that brings the most swimmers who have the most number of splashs to the championships, is that the winner? Or do you take the total points and divide it by the number of splashes? And of course, who and how is the tabulation going to be done? Just curious. michael

I am so glad to see this discussion. The Large, Medium, and Small divisions may not have worked perfectly, but the system was better than the current one. I am intrigued by the suggestion of number of actual events entered. I don't know if it is practicial, but it would account for the swimmers who do not have qualifying times and can only swim 3 events. I also worry about the definition of a "mega" team. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Please no. I like my club. I am proud of the work that goes into it and its competitive tradition, and I would rather not be part of some "team" that is a group in name only. Honestly, I think LMSC and state teams are bad for competition: If you want to swim relays get four people from your team to go! That way you encourage your teammates to push themselves, both in competition and training. (It is hilarious how many people on my team come in swearing they won't compete, get nagged into going to a team focus meet, and wind up sucked in and ready to go to nationals.) So I would rather superteams didn't exist at all. However, at least with two divisions, you wouldn't be actively promoting a worse option. I agree!! I joined my team because it was a "real" club team with good swimmers who had been on the team for years and longtime coaches. I purposefully did not join VMST, which is our state-wide umbrella team. State wide teams practice in a million different locations and have no real affinity other than the name. I'd rather swim relays with people I consider my teammates or friends. Many of our swimmers never compete. But, as with some girl's team, we all make a good showing at zones. One year everyone trained like crazy and went to nationals in Hawaii together and won the small team championship. So, I think the state wide or mega teams should be separated from the true clubs. I wouldn't object to going back to SML either. Arbitrariness is part of life. Some minor unfairness at the masters level is not breaking my heart.

Oregon competed as a state team at Nationals. At our Association champs in April, we competed as local teams. I had a great time slugging it out against the other medium sized teams at Associations with my teammates. But I also really enjoyed the chance to meet to meet and swim relays at Nationals with some of the folks I have been swimming against at local meets but had not had the opportunity to meet. I'm with Peter on this -- why keep team scoring at Nationals at all? And Rob's point is a good one -- what end is served? There appears to be no way to ensure a level playing field without limiting the number of swims and defining team status and eligibility. Although I agree that the true clubs which consistently compete and score at a high level deserve recognition. I don't think we can do this in VA? To compete with out state umbrella team, I'd have to un-register with my club team and re-register with VMST, then go through that process all over again to re-join my club team. I have no desire to go through the paperwork, fees and hassle. Besides, I meet plenty of people at local meets. Perhaps coincidentally, most of them are on local club teams, not superteams. And personally, at Nats, assuming low attendance by my team (0 at Federal Way), I'd rather forget all the superteams and state teams and scoring and just be free to swim relays with anyone I wanted to. For example, I'd love to swim a relay with my FAF Sista twin. I'd love to swim a relay with Imspoiled, whose club team was duking it out with my club team at zones.

I'm all for breaking up the super teams, even though it was great swimming with a bunch of people from all over Colorado at two nationals. I would understand if a team championship meant more money, sponsorship or prestige for a team, but if the host teams always win the meet, and if coaches of super teams are actively recruiting people to join them just to get a banner that probably will never be hung on a wall or a rafter, it seems pointless. Bottom line, I think nationals would have a different flavor if everyone had to represent a team within 100 miles of their home address. The meet would be pure, and you wouldn't have all the gossip on the deck regarding team scoring. The fact that the issue affected swim4life's opinion of his/her first nationals shows what the main goal of the meet is for most people. Between this and the way nationals/worlds are seeded, it's obvious a major overhaul needs to be done.

I agree with Fort on the friendly rivalry breeds good competition point. There can be (I won't say is, since it may not be the same for all) an added extra spark of competitive juices when two (or 10) teams are duking it out for bragging rights--rival teams of similar size or geographic location. On the smaller club level, there is no way to feel that added extra something if you are one of 12 swimmers on a team competing against 100+ swimmers of umbrella teams. Even taking first in all your events will not put your team in the top 10. My club has roughly 60 registered swimmers in any given year. Some are triathletes that just workout with the team and others just like the team practice and never compete. Roughly 10-20 of us compete on a regular basis, and maybe 8-15 make NQTs. Even if all of the qualifiers and interested parties showed up at Nationals, we couldn't keep up with the mega teams. This year, two of us made the trip to Seattle. We finished 97th. A team championship was never in the cards. Instead, we were focused on personal best times and maybe a medal or two. There is a distinct home team/home state advantage to team scoring at nats. With litte or no travel costs and a state umbrella team, everyone can enter the meet. Put together a bunch of relays, and it is a point fest. To me, this does not breed comraderie (well, maybe for the mega team). It just makes the little team feel less important. There's fair, and then there's fair. Yes, it's fair to let Meet Manager add up all the points and declare a winner. But, is it fair to all the competing teams? Drawing a line to distinguish teams of different size may not be entirely fair, but it is more fair than ranking a team of 20 (or 10, or 5, or 1) against a team of 100+. If a system can't be implemented that is as fair to the smaller clubs as it is to the larger ones, then maybe Peter is right. Don't award team prizes at national meets. Just let the Meet Manager software do the talking and let the swimmers interpret the results, without officially sanctioning a winner.

And mine either. However, since everyone ignored it, I will restate- why keep track at all. Before you recoil in automatic horror, consider that there are evident large flaws in the system and no one (to this point) has come up with a seamless solution that satisfies everyone- so why do it? In Canada (I know, some of you automatically discount this statement) we have not, in my experience, kept track of team standings at nationals. There has been no observable suffering on the deck because of this- so why do it?

Wow, I'm glad to see people discussing this...I want to address a few items from the previous posts: (1) Number of splashes. When calculating score by the number of splashes, slower swimmers will still be discouraged from attending Nationals because it will weaken a team's strength, so I cannot support this option (...how ever it may be calculated, i.e., total points divided by number of splashes). (2) "Arbitrainess is part of life." This may be true, but while there is CLEAR arbitrariness in the SML team scoring, this factor is minimized (or nearly eliminated) with Mega Team/Cub Team scoring. Why deal with arbitrariness when we don't need to? I realize there will still be room for debate for a team like the Olympic Club who competes with swimmers from around the country even though they don't train together as long as they are really fast. But, that discussion can be saved for another day. I would still rather compete against the Olympic Club than an ENTIRE STATE. I would be fine considering the Olympic Club a club team. People have mentioned that determining what is considered a Mega Team may be difficult, but I still think it seems rather clear. PLEASE fill me in on what I'm missing. (3) "Mega teams are bad for competition." As I stated before, in my ideal world we would all compete with our club team. I completely agree that TRAINING WITH FRIENDS IN PREPARATION FOR NATIONALS is half of the fun of going to Nationals. I truly don't understand the benefit - on a personal level - of training all year with friends and then going to Nationals to compete (on a team or relay) with people you've never even met. Who cares? I obviously enjoy competing with my club team, and if Team Pacific actually materializes, my team will surely opt out of competing as part of it because we are our own cohesive unit, we are proud of what we can accomplish through our own hard work, and we are truly a family that I LOVE. Joining a larger force in order to score more points does nothing for me. Where's the team pride in that? Does the USMS Championship Committee and the rest of the LMSC Mega Teams really want to egg on California to create "Team Pacific" or "California Masters"? How boring would that be? I apologize if my passion spills into this post, but I am still just waiting for someone to present an argument against Mega Team/Club Team scoring. Is there one?

I don't think we can do this in VA? To compete with out state umbrella team, I'd have to un-register with my club team and re-register with VMST, then go through that process all over again to re-join my club team. I have no desire to go through the paperwork, fees and hassle I got it a little bit wrong -- I think all of us were still technically swimming as Oreg, but the team scores were tabulated based on our local clubs. Sure made it fun, and my teammates and I cheered like fools for every point. The high point was our women's 25 + relay, which consisted of women ages 31, 46, 53, and 62, winning when the much faster and younger competitors in their age bracket got DQ'd.