It is obvious that the new team scoring rules for National Championships has not achieved the purposes for which it was designed. At 2009 LC Nationals, many relatively small teams were classified as "regional teams" because their LMSC is so small that they all compete together at Nationals (ie., MOVY with 25 members), and many huge teams were not classified as "regional" teams because there were multiple teams in their LMSC (ie., IndySwimfit with 125 members). If the intent of the new rule was to prevent large teams from overpowering small teams in team scoring, the current rule has produced a ridiculous result.
I don't know why USMS abandoned the concept of Large Team/Small Team scoring years ago, but this concept would seem to work much more equitably. Some might argue that it is difficult to draw the line between large and small teams, but I think it becomes pretty obvious if you look at the Team Rosters from this year's meet. If the Championship Committee made this determination prior to each Nationals after the entries closed, which is the way they used to do it, if I remember correctly, we would minimize the potential problems with setting an arbitrary immutable limit for all Nationals.
Okay, so let me get this straight...We have a 4 lane 25 yard pool at the Y, and we are servicing 25 members, and there are others who would like to participate, but we can not accommodate them...The HS across the street builds a 10 lane 50 M indoor pool and invites us to have our program in their facility, this then becomes a satellite pool and we are no longer a "club"...This becomes unfair to Walnut Creek because we have multiple pools...You gotta be kidding...We unfortunately do not have one pool owned by the city parks department where we could have multiple practices each day... While I realize you work out in the same pool every day... The YMCA has other programs that do not allow multiple scheduled Masters practices...The GRIN website is out of date (very unfortunate)...Franklin, Carmel, Greenwood, and Noblesville all have programs, these are small communities in and around Indianapolis....What many don't seem to understand, individual clubs build membership and leadership...If you have only 3 people on your team and are competitive and need 4th for a relay you will find one...Its not all about winning its about competing with people you workout with on a daily basis... We do that, all members of our program can go to any location at any time based on their work and family committments...A case in point...We provided 10 team banners for each of the two divisions "Club" and "Regional"....Interesting fact, all of the Club banners were picked up, only 3 Regional banners were picked up...The Regional Clubs have no definitive leadership and no one really wants the team award, because there is no place to put the banner or plaque or whatever...
Okay, so let me get this straight...We have a 4 lane 25 yard pool at the Y, and we are servicing 25 members, and there are others who would like to participate, but we can not accommodate them...The HS across the street builds a 10 lane 50 M indoor pool and invites us to have our program in their facility, this then becomes a satellite pool and we are no longer a "club"...This becomes unfair to Walnut Creek because we have multiple pools...You gotta be kidding...We unfortunately do not have one pool owned by the city parks department where we could have multiple practices each day... While I realize you work out in the same pool every day... The YMCA has other programs that do not allow multiple scheduled Masters practices...The GRIN website is out of date (very unfortunate)...Franklin, Carmel, Greenwood, and Noblesville all have programs, these are small communities in and around Indianapolis....What many don't seem to understand, individual clubs build membership and leadership...If you have only 3 people on your team and are competitive and need 4th for a relay you will find one...Its not all about winning its about competing with people you workout with on a daily basis... We do that, all members of our program can go to any location at any time based on their work and family committments...A case in point...We provided 10 team banners for each of the two divisions "Club" and "Regional"....Interesting fact, all of the Club banners were picked up, only 3 Regional banners were picked up...The Regional Clubs have no definitive leadership and no one really wants the team award, because there is no place to put the banner or plaque or whatever...
