I have been thinking about an issue Jeff Commings brought up after the SCY Nationals. Jeff pointed out that he might have gone faster if he had been seeded by time rather than by age. I though the same thing as I watched others, including Dennis Baker, Gary Marshall, Rich Abraham, and others decimate their age group competition. How cool would it have been to see heats of the best of the best go head to head? And the competition would likely lead to faster times, at least for those swimmers who like to be pushed as opposed to swimming in clear water.
But for most of us mid-pack folks, it's a whole lot more exciting racing against our competition than a random assortment of folks who happened to have the same seed time. And often those seed times are wildly inaccurate anyway.
I have a couple of thoughts, neither of which are probably workable, but which might be food for thought. One method might involve culling out the top 24 (or some other number) men and top 24 women seeds from each event and swimming them in separate heats. To prevent gaming the seeds, the race staff would compare seeds to actual times within the past year. The remaining swimmers would swim seeded by age. This would be extra work for the race committee, but probably would not increase the length of the meet a whole bunch, if at all, because these folks would be swimming anyway.
Another suggestion might be a prelim/final format, with the top 24 times from each event swimming it again later. There are rest issues and length of meet issues with this one, but how fun would that be? The rock stars would have to figure out just how hard to go in their age group heat to advance, and the finals would be an all-out blast.
Just thinking out loud . . .
I love all the ideas expressed. However, if one wanted to seed only a few heats of each event by time, it should be the 3 fastest heats of the the 50 and older age groups, not the (or not only the) 3 fastest heats overall. If one looks at results, it is generally the older winners who swim without as much competition.
There is a rule right now that allows events 400 yards or longer to be deck-seeded by a combination of some heats by age group and some by time only. If any of you are serious about such an idea for shorter events, go to your LMSC before July of next year (it is too late for this year, unless one gets a committee to push the idea) and ask the LMSC to propose a rule change (Even years are when Rules can be changed by a 50% vote of the House of Delegates). One would change Rule 104.5.5 A (4) by removing the words "Events 400 yards/meters and longer shall be deck-seeded" and instead say "Any event may be preseeded or deck-seeded" and use the rest of the language in the present rule.
It would seem wise to ask Tom Taylor of Hy-tek about the feasibility of such combination seeding before going to the trouble of writing a rule.
This email says it is from Tom Boak, but this is actually Carolyn Boak
I love all the ideas expressed. However, if one wanted to seed only a few heats of each event by time, it should be the 3 fastest heats of the the 50 and older age groups, not the (or not only the) 3 fastest heats overall. If one looks at results, it is generally the older winners who swim without as much competition.
There is a rule right now that allows events 400 yards or longer to be deck-seeded by a combination of some heats by age group and some by time only. If any of you are serious about such an idea for shorter events, go to your LMSC before July of next year (it is too late for this year, unless one gets a committee to push the idea) and ask the LMSC to propose a rule change (Even years are when Rules can be changed by a 50% vote of the House of Delegates). One would change Rule 104.5.5 A (4) by removing the words "Events 400 yards/meters and longer shall be deck-seeded" and instead say "Any event may be preseeded or deck-seeded" and use the rest of the language in the present rule.
It would seem wise to ask Tom Taylor of Hy-tek about the feasibility of such combination seeding before going to the trouble of writing a rule.
This email says it is from Tom Boak, but this is actually Carolyn Boak
