Although I've been swimming since just after h.s., I've never really competed on a swim team or in many organized meets. But my daughter swam in h.s. so I got in the habit of checking local meet results in the sports pages, and still do. I like to see how I would fair with my current times in the various races. Even at almost 56 years old, with a 500m free time of mid-6-minutes, I find that I'd at least be in the race occassionally against some high schoolers. The better times for the boys in this area (Rhode Island) generally tend to be in the mid-5-minute range. But today there are meet results posted in which I could have won all of the freestyle events. And possibly some of the other stroke races as well. But the thing that baffles me most about this particular meet are the winning times for all four of the 100m races. As expected, "usually" the 100 free is the fastest of the four. Followed closely by the 100 butterfly, then the 100 back, and finally the 100 ***. But in this meet the fastest 100 race was the butterfly at 1:03.66. Then, seven seconds back at 1:10.82 is the 100m backstroke. Nearly two seconds behind that at 1:11.9 was the 100m freestyle. Then eight seconds after that at 1:18.8 was the 100m breaststroke. Also odd was that the 200 IM, at 2:18.62 was faster than the 200 freestyle at 2:23.34.
I dunno...maybe all that isn't so uncommon to those of you who've swum competitively for years. I just find it odd.
Dan
You're assuming all of the swimmers have similar backgrounds and abilities. Sounds like the coach is putting the newer swimmers in the shorter freestyle events and putting his better swimmers in the others. You can only swim two individual events at a high school meet. Maybe they only have one or two kids who swim year-round so they only show up in a couple of events and are fast.
No, I'm just stating what I observe in the results. And this isn't just one school/meet. I've now seen it in three different meets involving six different schools. I just find it odd that some of the freestyle events have slower winning times than the winning times of some of the other strokes in the same distance (both butterfly and backstroke, and in one meet the 100 breaststroke winner would have placed in the 100 freestyle). But now what I think may be happening is that those faster swimmers are being used to stack the relays since those races are worth more points. In RI a swimmer may enter a total of four events, only two can be individual events.
Dan
You're assuming all of the swimmers have similar backgrounds and abilities. Sounds like the coach is putting the newer swimmers in the shorter freestyle events and putting his better swimmers in the others. You can only swim two individual events at a high school meet. Maybe they only have one or two kids who swim year-round so they only show up in a couple of events and are fast.
No, I'm just stating what I observe in the results. And this isn't just one school/meet. I've now seen it in three different meets involving six different schools. I just find it odd that some of the freestyle events have slower winning times than the winning times of some of the other strokes in the same distance (both butterfly and backstroke, and in one meet the 100 breaststroke winner would have placed in the 100 freestyle). But now what I think may be happening is that those faster swimmers are being used to stack the relays since those races are worth more points. In RI a swimmer may enter a total of four events, only two can be individual events.
Dan
