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
Dan, I see where you are coming from but the analogy to football just doesn't work. I wasn't clear in my original post, but if I've got enough kids to fill out a meet, then we fill our the meet. If we don't, then I make decisions based on where the kids I've got can get me points. If that means only having one or two kids in the 500, then that's what it is.
I don't like the idea of letting any kid swim a 5th event under "special" circumstances just so the event goes off. I don't see how that helps to measure one team against another. If a team has a very small team with a bunch of studs, they can hang in there and put up a fight with a larger team, but now changing the rules to allow the smaller team to operate on a different set of rules changes the competition.
I get that you don't want to see the 500 cancelled, and maybe my view is clouded because in my years of HS coaching we've never cancelled a 500, but have combined girls and boys into a single heat, but I'd rather see the event cancelled than start making unique little rules that only apply to certain circumstances at certain times in certain races.
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Dan, I see where you are coming from but the analogy to football just doesn't work. I wasn't clear in my original post, but if I've got enough kids to fill out a meet, then we fill our the meet. If we don't, then I make decisions based on where the kids I've got can get me points. If that means only having one or two kids in the 500, then that's what it is.
I don't like the idea of letting any kid swim a 5th event under "special" circumstances just so the event goes off. I don't see how that helps to measure one team against another. If a team has a very small team with a bunch of studs, they can hang in there and put up a fight with a larger team, but now changing the rules to allow the smaller team to operate on a different set of rules changes the competition.
I get that you don't want to see the 500 cancelled, and maybe my view is clouded because in my years of HS coaching we've never cancelled a 500, but have combined girls and boys into a single heat, but I'd rather see the event cancelled than start making unique little rules that only apply to certain circumstances at certain times in certain races.
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