I am aware that this has been discussed in the past, but I wanted to revisit the issue. Why can we not at least in alternate years schedule the 800 free on Saturday or Sunday? Taking time off from work is challenging for many of us, yet each summer only the distance swimmers must make arrangements to travel midweek. The impact on the timeline could be mitigated by enforcing NQTs for this one event.
Why can we not at least in alternate years schedule the 800 free on Saturday or Sunday?We can change the schedule.
104.5.2 Schedule— A four-day or five-day schedule for national championship meets shall be used. The Championship Committee shall set the meet schedule for each national championship meet.
One problem we run into is numbers. In San Antonio there were around 400 swimmers on distance day and around 1,600 on the other 3 days. Moving other events to day 1 and quadrupling the number of travel challenged people may not be the best solution and there would likely be a 400 IM or 500 Free on the first day. Another number is officials; it takes about half as many officials on deck during distance day as it does for the other 3-4.
But back to changing the schedule… the Championship committee is frequently asked to evaluate different event schedules. You may want to propose one different event schedule to them. It would be interesting to see what a “distance day” of a 1500 and 400; and the 800’s replacing the 400’s on short days would do for a timeline.
