At risk of "beating a dead horse"....at least in respect to broaching this topic again! I had a number of conversations at convention with people who would like to see USMS move to a 3rd Championship meet in the fall for short course meters.
There are some great Zone meets going on...when you have 600+ going to Long Beach or New England why not up the ante a bit?
Thoughts?
NCAA's is practically a third Nationals.
Only if you're in college... :)
I can believe that, but to me there's not much of a difference between being a LMSC champ or a Zone champ in an event. If I have the chance to be a National champ, that's more enticing. I think there's going to be more high level competition if a meet has the Nationals label.
If it is a big enough zone meet, the level of competition can meet or even exceed that of nationals. The reason is that, at zones, they seed by time only. And at zones you aren't limited to 6 events and you (usually) don't have to worry about qualifying times.
Interesting that so many pools can run two SCM courses, presumably with additional space for warmup/warmdown. I wonder why hosts don't exercise the option of running spring nationals as a SCM meet? (I seem to think this was done once.) Are they worried there would be less interest? I believe that the primary drivers of nationals attendance are location and timing, but maybe people are just more comfortable with SCY.
NCAA's is practically a third Nationals.
Only if you're in college... :)
I can believe that, but to me there's not much of a difference between being a LMSC champ or a Zone champ in an event. If I have the chance to be a National champ, that's more enticing. I think there's going to be more high level competition if a meet has the Nationals label.
If it is a big enough zone meet, the level of competition can meet or even exceed that of nationals. The reason is that, at zones, they seed by time only. And at zones you aren't limited to 6 events and you (usually) don't have to worry about qualifying times.
Interesting that so many pools can run two SCM courses, presumably with additional space for warmup/warmdown. I wonder why hosts don't exercise the option of running spring nationals as a SCM meet? (I seem to think this was done once.) Are they worried there would be less interest? I believe that the primary drivers of nationals attendance are location and timing, but maybe people are just more comfortable with SCY.
