Question to throw to the group out of curiosity -- What do people think about reasonable seed times for swim meets? Now, I know that people almost always enter masters meets with times that are best guesses, but what about entry times that are definitely not best guesses?
Hypothetical scenario: 400 IM and 50 free are back-to-back events at an end-of-season championship meet. Swimmer enters both events, with a time of 15:00.00 for the 400 IM, and 23.50 for the 50 free. For other events in the meet, the same swimmer is entered at 2:06 for the 200 IM, 2:10 for the 200 fly, etc. So _clearly_ this person is faster than 15:00 in the 400 IM. When asked, the swimmer says, honestly, that the seed time is bogus so that he has a longer rest before swimming the 50 free right afterwards. (The meet info for this hypothetical situation does _not_ allow for 'NT' entries.)
What do people think about this? I can't find any USMS rule that prohibits this, but it feels rather unfair to the other people in Heat 1 who actually do belong in Heat 1, and will have some fast person in an outside lane lap them a couple times. My personal feeling is that if the order of events doesn't work for you, then don't swim one of the events.
Thoughts?
-Rick
Another follow-up -- I'll point out that a similar situation did arise at a meet I ran last year (a meet with 500+ masters swimmers). We were running the 1650 and 1000 freestyle on Friday evening. We were deck-seeding between two competition courses. There was an administrative screw up, and someone wasn't seeded in the fast heat. The fast heats had already gone, so we had no choice but to put a faster person (someone who would have been either fastest or second-fastest heat) in the slowest heat in an empty lane. I think we even put an empty lane between. However, we did have a couple of complaints from other people in that slowest heat that we put the fast person in with them. They didn't like being lapped 10 times in the event.
-Rick
Another follow-up -- I'll point out that a similar situation did arise at a meet I ran last year (a meet with 500+ masters swimmers). We were running the 1650 and 1000 freestyle on Friday evening. We were deck-seeding between two competition courses. There was an administrative screw up, and someone wasn't seeded in the fast heat. The fast heats had already gone, so we had no choice but to put a faster person (someone who would have been either fastest or second-fastest heat) in the slowest heat in an empty lane. I think we even put an empty lane between. However, we did have a couple of complaints from other people in that slowest heat that we put the fast person in with them. They didn't like being lapped 10 times in the event.
-Rick
