distance swimmers shorted

Let's look at past Long Course meets to see how it would have worked out. We can't use last year's meet (Puerto Rico) as a guide because there were only 632 swimmers, the meet was mid-week and held outside the 50 states. We can't use 2009 (Indy) as a guide because they had the all relay day option. So let's use 2008 (Portland) as an example. Portland had just over 1100 swimmers, making it slightly larger than average (average is about 1000). They had a traditional 4 day meet with the distance day on Thursday and distance swimmers could only choose the 800 or 1500. Plus they even had to deck seed the 200s. Here was the estimated timeline for that meet: www.usms.org/.../timeline.pdf The projected ending times were: Thursday: 9:20pm Friday: 6:40pm Saturday: 8:40pm Sunday: 5:50pm If you shuffled the events around and added the couple to three extra hours for those who picked both distance events, how would you do it? As it was Sunday ended much too late for those who wanted to fly out on Sunday evening. Saturday night already was a rally killer for any kind of social or dinner plans with teammates. We have had meets where swimmers could do both distance events, but they have typically been cases where a 5 day format was offered or the facility could accommodate extra capacity (e.g. second 50m competition pool). If swimmers were allowed to do both the 800 and 1500 during a traditional meet (4 days, one 50m course) there would have to be tradeoffs somewhere else. For instance, the whole meet would likely have to be deck seeded (so you wouldn't have a nice program to follow the whole meet plus there will be an unfortunate small group of swimmers who fly all the way to the meet but forget to check-in; plus that requires extra staffing on behalf of the Host to accommodate). We'd probably also have to seed most events strictly by time (except for the 50s) instead of by age group. In Portland men and women already had to swim together in the 800 and 1500 - we'd probably have to combine genders in shorter events as well. It's unfortunate the distance swimmers cannot swim both events but unless we have two 50m courses for Summer Nationals or a third 25y course for Spring Nationals, it isn't feasible. Jeff

Let's look at past Long Course meets to see how it would have worked out. We can't use last year's meet (Puerto Rico) as a guide because there were only 632 swimmers, the meet was mid-week and held outside the 50 states. We can't use 2009 (Indy) as a guide because they had the all relay day option. So let's use 2008 (Portland) as an example. Portland had just over 1100 swimmers, making it slightly larger than average (average is about 1000). They had a traditional 4 day meet with the distance day on Thursday and distance swimmers could only choose the 800 or 1500. Plus they even had to deck seed the 200s. Here was the estimated timeline for that meet: www.usms.org/.../timeline.pdf The projected ending times were: Thursday: 9:20pm Friday: 6:40pm Saturday: 8:40pm Sunday: 5:50pm If you shuffled the events around and added the couple to three extra hours for those who picked both distance events, how would you do it? As it was Sunday ended much too late for those who wanted to fly out on Sunday evening. Saturday night already was a rally killer for any kind of social or dinner plans with teammates. We have had meets where swimmers could do both distance events, but they have typically been cases where a 5 day format was offered or the facility could accommodate extra capacity (e.g. second 50m competition pool). If swimmers were allowed to do both the 800 and 1500 during a traditional meet (4 days, one 50m course) there would have to be tradeoffs somewhere else. For instance, the whole meet would likely have to be deck seeded (so you wouldn't have a nice program to follow the whole meet plus there will be an unfortunate small group of swimmers who fly all the way to the meet but forget to check-in; plus that requires extra staffing on behalf of the Host to accommodate). We'd probably also have to seed most events strictly by time (except for the 50s) instead of by age group. In Portland men and women already had to swim together in the 800 and 1500 - we'd probably have to combine genders in shorter events as well. It's unfortunate the distance swimmers cannot swim both events but unless we have two 50m courses for Summer Nationals or a third 25y course for Spring Nationals, it isn't feasible. Jeff