Team Scoring at Nationals

I apologize for my initial posting if anyone interpretted my remarks as a criticism of any particular "Club" or "Regional" team. That was not my intent. More power to any organization that can recruit enough members to win the Team Championship in either category. My comment was strictly about fairness in scoring. I realize that the intent of the most recent attempt to solve this problem was to differentiate between "regional" teams and "Clubs". I have no quarrel with the application of the existing rule. Nevertheless, I think that the issue underlying every attempt to alter the "team Scoring" rules relating to Nationals is the injustice of small teams having to compete with meg-teams, whether they are "regional" or not. I take no issue with the fact that Indy SwimFit is a "Club" team. Mel did a fabulous job of recruiting an amazing number of competitors for a city the size of Indy which fielded multiple other clubs as well. CONGRATULATIONS, Mel! (I believe that INDY SwimFir would have won the Team award no matter how it was classified.) My commemts relate solely to the fact that the intent of the Rules, I think, is to prevent large teams from always overshadowing smaller teams. While there may never be a perfect rule, I believe that classifying teams strictly by number of participants is infinitely more fair than the current system. And, yes, I am sometimes the only member of my Club at Nationals, as I was in Fresno this Spring, so team scoring is seldom an issue for my team to begin with. BUT FAIRNESS IS ALWAYS AN ISSUE... Let's don't use this discussion as an excuse to pit any one Club against another.

Let's don't use this discussion as an excuse to pit any one Club against another. Except against Paul's club...then anything goes. :D

Let's don't use this discussion as an excuse to pit any one Club against another. Cathy...this forum is all about picking fights and attacking people! :) In all seriousness this is not piting anyone against another...however there has been a VERY long standing "tradition" if you will to bash "Regional" teams or so called "Super Teams" (such as Team TYR). Having been probably one of the few people who as ever swam with each type (Vail, RMM, TYR & now Arizona) I get a kick out of how some people approach the subject... At least we haven't seen any coaches contact the meet director and try and to get some swimmers designated as "unattached" so they would qualify as a "small" team under the old system (and was one of the major tipping points that led to the dropping of that system). Jim...go back to work and be quiet!

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... Mel: I resent this statement and not just from by association with Michigan Masters. You managed to insult all these regional clubs such as North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, PNA, Georgia, New England, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnestoa, SKY and any other Regional team that has competed at Nationals. The Michigan Masters website is NOT out of date, very fortunate and from this team picture that is linked here www.michiganmasters.com/ I would not say that these swimmer really don't care about the team performance and the team banner.

It is obvious that the new team scoring rules for National Championships has not achieved the purposes for which it was designed. . . . 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. As one of the prime movers to get the system changed, I disagree with your premise. The new system is working exactly like it was intended to work. It allows the regional teams to compete with each other and it allows those local teams to compete with each other. I see the MOVY took fifth place in the regional team division, I think you should have received a banner for your well deserved effort. In the last incarnation of how we computed team awards, MOVY would have taken 11th and received that thanks of the meet director but no banner. You can go to many of the prior discussion forums about team scoring to get a history of what was liked and disliked about the scoring system that was in use at that time. Having been on championship committee for a bunch of years, I have seen the committee and the host come up with demarkation lines for large, medium and small (would you like to tell me the difference between a team of 10 and team of 11. What happens when one swimmer does not show up. And of course as Paul brought up, there is the infamous case of the coach who wanted to have one of his swimmer swim unattached so that team could be in a smaller category). While nothing is perfect and there is no doubt that there will be a call to tweak the scoring again, I think the current system will work for a few more years, if only because no one want to get to the HOD to try to argue for a different one :-) ) One last thing, the rule is to separate "Regional Teams," those teams that when they compete at local meets or LMSC Championships, compete as workout groups or sub groups from other teams. The nexus is how does the team compete in local/regional meets. Thus Mel can have his Indy Swim Fit as a local team, as it competes as its own team in local and regional meets and Arizona is a regional team as it compete as smaller groups in local meets. -michael

I am fine with the scoring as it is.For some reason our team.OREG doesn't travel well.When the meet is here or close we get a huge turn out(I think we had over 300 swimmers at our LCM last year),but there are just a few of us who go to LCM Nats regularly.We were 11th at both Indy and Fresno,If we had been 10th we definitely would have picked up our award.Even though we are spread over the state and don't travel well we are still an amazingly close team.

I am fine with the scoring as it is as well. Two days into the meet, figure out where your team (regional, club, whatever) is in the standings. Then rally your teammates and try to improve on that.

All I can say is that I'm proud of our (Michigan Masters) Regional National Championship. All 45 members swam numerous events and relays to accomplish this feat and for that, I thank each and everyone of them.

A bit of clarification: The diving well at WC is a 6 lane 25 M Pool, have you forgotten already? I swam in that diving well once! But I stand corrected. WC has something like 6 workouts/day. Try getting that many lanes (50? 60?) in one pool in a large urban area. One club = one pool simply doesn't work for every club.

I swam in that diving well once! But I stand corrected. WC has something like 6 workouts/day. Try getting that many lanes (50? 60?) in one pool in a large urban area. One club = one pool simply doesn't work for every club. Actually it's: 5:45, 6:45, 10:30 AM, Noon, 7PM. (no PM on Friday, no regular Saturday or Sunday) For sure I know what you're saying, you know our situation, but we're making it work! FWIW, I liked the old system of nat's scoring, your team was who came to the meet for combined, men and women lg, med and small. You always knew that the home team had a big advantage for team honors, but only in one size category.