Need ideas for stirring interest in a our 1st meet

11) create an incentive to enter early One way to do this is to offer a distance event but restrict it to the first X entries. Like if you have a 6 lane pool, put something like "the 1000 free will be limited to the first 12 entries" on the entry form. This type of limit caused me to enter the Lake City Masters Spring Splash around 6 or 7 weeks ahead of time :blush:

Hi! I hope you find more interest, because I was planning on attending the meet. I just returned to the water in January after 5 years, and would love this meet. I am asking my teammates to go, 2 of us are originally from PA and we are working on other swimmers in your area to attend the meet.

Lucky Leprechan? Offer a "pot of gold" to the high-point winners, or to the team that scores the most points. (Could be a cool trophy filled with gold foiled chocolate coins! ... Then again, could be a coupon good for a "pint" of delicious gold-colored beer at the nearest pub!)

What everyone on here says is true. I probably get 50% of my entries in the last 2-3 days before the entry deadline. But it's also true that people have to know about a meet in order to enter it and the first year of hosting a meet is always the hardest to drum up entries. The next year is easy, just e-mail the people who came the year before , send them an announcement of the date and a link to the new entry form. Maybe like Jim suggested your LMSC's registrar or newsletter editor will be able to send a mass e-mail with your entry form attached. And send an e-mail to local masters teams coaches or contact people and ask them to forward to their swimmers. Good luck!

Relax. Nobody enters a local meet six weeks in advance. They wait until the last minute to put down their money, because they don't know if they'll be sick, if they'll have child care, if they'll have some work emergency that consumes the weekend, if it will be snowing, if their best friend will want them to help give a dinner party, etc. So true - and it is at the end of Spring Break here, so people may also be holding off entering if they are considering taking a vacation. I always enter during the last week so that if my other half suddenly gets sent somewhere on business I can either not enter, or like I did in November when I took my kids along, pick my events carefully - ie not the 1500.

One way to do this is to offer a distance event but restrict it to the first X entries. Like if you have a 6 lane pool, put something like "the 1000 free will be limited to the first 12 entries" on the entry form. This type of limit caused me to enter the Lake City Masters Spring Splash around 6 or 7 weeks ahead of time :blush: Even though there is still only 2 people entered in the meet. :D You'll find that most in the Inland NW wait till the last week to enter, regardless of the "rules". But at least you're in the meet!

Check on dvmasters.org for club contacts for Harrisburg and other Central PA places to swim. Email the contacts at those pools. People from Harrisburg come to our meets. They might go to yours since you have a sanctioned meet. We have the entry form on our local LMSC(Delaware Valley) web site event list. It is way too early to cancel it. Tell the board that Masters meets are more last minute while USA-S entries have to be sent out 3 months in advance.

1) PROVIDE YOUR MEET INFO IN THIS THREAD 2012 SCY CV Masters Lucky Leprechaun Meet Mar 17, 2012: SCY at Chartiers Valley High School Bridgeville, PA Sanctioned by the Allegheny Mountain LMSC of USMS View Details MEET INFO 2) check the meet calendar to see if there are any USMS meets within 0 - 200 miles of yours, 3) host the meet in an awesome fast pool, yours looks pretty good 4) give the meet a great name, y'all did 5) design the meet well, order of events, plan breaks if it's small, 6) have your info up on www.usms.org/.../event_search.php you do 7) send a series of emails announce it remind remind last chance reminder 8) offer online entries 9) send emails to coaches of large USMS teams that are 250 miles or less Primarily Great Lakes Zone & colonies zone AM, LE, OH, VA, NI, DV, PV, AD, NJ, MD 10) drum up lots of local attendance call swimmers and ask em to come have fun 11) create an incentive to enter early, 12) allow deck entries Our masters club has our first scheduled meet on March 17th. I don't know how to stir interest to get people to come. We have 3 entries and may have to cancel. This will be the last and only attempt at a masters meet from our club(which is a USA driven board and hold 3 USA meets a year, one is the biggest in the lsc). I know I have support from my club(the kids parents esp.). I have emailed a lot of folks on our LMSC privately. And some have pasted it on(thanks Jim). I've attend a meet at a local LMSC and brought meet invites. It's on the calender of events. I'm from Allegheny Mountain LMSC, if you want to check it out... I have to attend our board meeting in a week..ekkss.. I hate to cancel, I have a month...any ideas?!?! HELP

I posted it to our Niagara front page a couple weeks ago. Not many of our 500 members travel though. I have LSC Championships in my own city that weekend, but I don't even know if I will make that. Good luck though, don't give up!

Relax. Nobody enters a local meet six weeks in advance. They wait until the last minute to put down their money, because they don't know if they'll be sick, if they'll have child care, if they'll have some work emergency that consumes the weekend, if it will be snowing, if their best friend will want them to help give a dinner party, etc. You have to host it the first time no matter how many people attend. Then next year, if you ran it well and it was a good addition to your local meet schedule, people who did attend will talk it up and your attendance will grow.