We don't go and recruit swimmers. They come to us. There is usually a connection to a team member, but in some cases people have randomly approached and asked to join.
Good to hear. I like to hear the "real story" from someone who knows. It's a lot more fun to be part of a team that acts like a team, that's for sure.
I happen to be a member of the "Yellow Clad Team" so speak with some knowledge. We don't go and recruit swimmers. They come to us. There is usually a connection to a team member, but in some cases people have randomly approached and asked to join. If you check the results, you will see that every single person on our team scored at least one point due to strategic event choice, but there are few superstars. Our National team consisted of a broad spectrum of swimmers, and most are pretty average in ability. We are a team...we support one another, and have a lot of fun. Maybe that's what draws people to us.
Thanks for chiming in swoomer. This is exactly what I see as well.
My opinion (and not necessarily that of the Championship Committee) is sandbagging by the three examples Kurt gave is unsportsmanlike. That is just my opinion and I respect that others feel it is ok to sandbag. Operationally it is not good for the running of a meet. I realize for one to three examples in some sprints doesn’t greatly affect the outcome of the whole day. However, if one person in every single heat does this (~10% of the entries) you could indeed impact the overall duration of a session by a noticeable margin. So just saying it is “ok for me to do it” is not in the best spirit of the meet as a whole. Which to me is being unsportsmanlike.
Also, in my opinion providing such false entry times is against the USMS Code of Regulations and Rules of Competition. There is a definition of seed times in the rulebook, so if you are falsifying your seed time by such great orders of magnitude you are in fact breaking our rules.
Like I said, those are my opinions. Next I’ll discuss this from the Championship Committee perspective.
Rule 104.5.5A(11) states:
If a swimmer enters an event with a time significantly slower or faster than that swimmer’s recorded time in the past two years, the meet director may, after a discussion with the swimmer, change the seeded time to a realistic time.
Unfortunately the enforcement of this rule is purely subjective. At this time there is no automation to detect such entry times. Some meets we never even utilize this option - others it is used one, two or three times. That is, the use of this rule is exceptionally rare when you take into account we have several thousand splashes at any given Nationals. And quite honestly, it is often only done because somebody else notices the suspect seed time in the psych sheets and brings it to the attention of the meet director. That is, the meet director doesn’t typically comb through several thousand seed times to look for these. Ms. Inada did this at a previous Nationals and it was pointed out on these Forums prior to the meet. In that case her times were changed prior to the meet. For Portland, nobody noticed (or more specifically, they weren’t brought to the attention of the meet director or Champ committee) so no changes were made.
Jeff Roddin
USMS Championship Committee
