OK, it may be over a year away but why not start a thread on 2011 Short Course (Spring) Nationals? This meet will be held at the newly-renovated Kino Aquatics Center in Mesa, which is just east of Phoenix. So go ahead and pipe in, I'm sure we will get some good conversation flowing.
Paul, not sure what you are saying is not true (?double negative), the weekend picked or monday being good.
I am thinking DCB does not care which weekend the first of his five part series is and am sure he picked that one to coincide with nationals (but you may know better).
As for 200 plus people being a low turnout...maybe, but not for a monday. DCB is usually around 200 on Saturday and am sure he would jump at 200 @ 40 dollars/head on Monday. I am sure there will be more on that particular Saturday with normal crowd plus some from nationals...the girls need to decide whether they miss the 500 and the guys need to decide whether they want to "corrupt" their 500 the following day. Sunday at about 11 am may have been a good choice as all the D-guys could get to Saguaro Lake by then.
Either way, you can't argue with placing open water events around nationals improving quality (I did not even crack top 3 in my age-group at Clovis--Erwin, Shaffer, and ?).
As for 1k, 2k, 4k, wetsuit/no wetsuit, age-groups--too many divisions.
I agree with you on both points.
Looking forward to both of you guys joining us at convention next year! Agenda item #1 coordination between Championship & Open Water Committees to hold the open water national championships as part of the pool championships!!
Maybe it's logistically too hard, but it would be nice to see open water events at each nationals as I don't really want to travel separately to Lake Placid, Ft. Myers, Indiana, Ogallala, or wherever the open water championships happen to reside. I'm sure in many cases you could farm out all the work of organization and volunteering to the local open water gurus (in this case DCB). It would certainly would improve the quality of swimmers at the events (outcome may be the same...Erwin for the win).
Open Water Nationals and Pool Nationals are both bid on two years in advance of their respective events. Typically pool Nationals are selected just prior to the fall convention two years in advance, and Open Water Nationals are selected a month later at convention. It sounds good in theory to combine the two events, but each event has its own set of narrow requirements to satisfy in order to host. Open Water Nationals has a bidding area map where bids are supposed to come from certain parts of the country for certain open water championship distances (page 64 of the 2010 rulebook). Pool Nationals doesn't have the same strict geographic requirement, but the Championship Committee is charged with moving the meet around as much as possible. So if a host is able to bid for both and can meet these requirements, then great. I'm quite sure a bidder would receive strong consideration from USMS if they can host both. I think we are fortunate Mesa has an open water opportunity the same weekend as Nationals so swimmers can make a choice to support one or both. But making them both National Championship events would have had to have been developed in the summer of 2009.
1) change the rules if that is the only thing keeping them separate.
There is nothing in the rules that specifically "keeps them separate," and it definitely isn't the only thing. Yes, the OW people do have their regions and that is given some priority, but they also recognize the value in combining an OW championship with pool nationals.
I don't remember which were national OW championships or not, but Clovis, PR, AZ and Auburn all had or will have OW events on the same weekend as nationals. (Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't matter much to me if an OW race is called a "national championship or not.)
It is hard for a potential meet host to put together a good bid for a pool nationals (or OW nationals); it is hard for the championship and LD committees soliciting such bids, as well as choosing the winning bid. Many years there have been only single bids for pool nationals.
I do agree that the regional thing should be a lesser priority than the possibility of combining with nationals, and that administrative barriers to combining them should be as low as possible. But I also don't think it is worth accepting an vastly inferior bid for either nationals just for the sake of combining them.
So while it is great when they are able to be combined, it is definitely a lot easier said than done.
Now that I have gotten info on Nats, the Mesa visitor agency sends me local info - thanx ,it will give us things to see when we are there.
Not sure how these will fit in with your visit...but some great stuff:
Arizona's must-do dozen:
www.azcentral.com/.../20110101resolutions0101intro.html
www.azcentral.com/.../20110101resolutions0101intro.html
Anyone planning to go to Nationals and is interested in the history of the region might want to read Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides. I thought of it because a few of the places mentioned in the article Paul linked figure in the book, Canyon de Chelly notably.
After my last event at Nats, I'll be looking foe all you can eat ribs !!!You should've gone to Nationals in Austin in 2008, then.
I've never been to this joint and don't know if it's still around, but here were the best ribs in 2009: www.phoenixnewtimes.com/.../.
