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
For me the fundamental question is not how we tally scores at nationals, but it is what do we need to do to best align with the USMS mission and objectives? Does scoring the top 10 promote fitness and health in adults better than S/M/L? Does scoring a true club team enhance fellowship and camaraderie among Masters swimmers?
Well said Rob! In the end, scoring at National meets affects 5-6% of USMS members. Of those, how many outside the tops clubs really care how well their team did? Many of us do care a lot about competition, Nationals, times, etc. but we are in the minority. We may be a very vocal minority but we don't represent the majority of USMS members.
I could be mistaken, but a non-competitive swimmer may perceive this as being much ado about nothing. We care, but how much do the swimmers we represent care?
Rob is keeping all of this in perspective, we should pause for a moment and do the same. Competition is great in my opinion but it should not distort our perspective or distract from the larger mission of promoting swimming as a healthy, lifetime activity to the public.
My preference is to adopt R31 as it is written in Atlanta and move on to other issues that will have a larger impact on our members, both current and prospective.
:2cents:
