There's a trend in this state (Rhode Island) that disappoints me. From time to time, in certain meets, they will do away with the 500 freestyle. And (when my daughter was on the HS team) I personally witnessed that it's sometimes because the coaches can't entice anyone to swim it. Lame! Sometimes it's because the team is so small that they don't have enough swimmers. OK...maybe! First, if I were the coach, and I have plenty of swimmers on my team, I pick a kid and tell him/her to get up on the blocks and swim the race!!! But...if the rules are going to be bent by not conducting an event...when a team is truly shorthanded...why not bend the rules differently? Instead of scratching an event, let certain swimmers compete in an extra event so that ALL the scheduled events can be competed?
Dan
Totally agree. I teach in a highschool of almost 2000 students and we have 23 boys on our swim team, about 28 on our girls squad. With 23 we can pretty much just fill out a dual meet. We are also a somewhat urban school where most of our students have never been taught how to swim. The one thing we've got going for us is that we have our own pool, so I always go down to the pool during the gym classes to make sure there aren't any swimmers who slip through the cracks. Two of our top sprinters were kids we found this way as juniors, just wish we could have gotten them as freshman. The one kid went a 23.01 in the 50 free in his last meet a few days ago.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Totally agree. I teach in a highschool of almost 2000 students and we have 23 boys on our swim team, about 28 on our girls squad. With 23 we can pretty much just fill out a dual meet. We are also a somewhat urban school where most of our students have never been taught how to swim. The one thing we've got going for us is that we have our own pool, so I always go down to the pool during the gym classes to make sure there aren't any swimmers who slip through the cracks. Two of our top sprinters were kids we found this way as juniors, just wish we could have gotten them as freshman. The one kid went a 23.01 in the 50 free in his last meet a few days ago.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
