I had a swimming dream last night and it gave me an idea for a meet. The meet would be a college "alumni meet" but with all colleges represented. This could be a standalone meet, but I'm sure it would be easier just to glom it onto an existing meet--such as Short Course Nationals. The basic idea would be that any swimmer could declare a college affiliation and then the meet would be scored like the NCAA swimming championships: top 16 swimmers score and relays count double. Rather than having specific age groups each swimmer's time would be adjusted for age. So, for example, a 60 year old who swims a 1:00 100 free might have an age corrected time of :50 seconds, while a 25 year old swimming a 100 free in :50 seconds would also have an age corrected time of :50 seconds . In the results the age correction is applied to every college competitor and then the top 16 score based on the age corrected times.
To score a relay all four relay swimmers would need to have the same college affiliation and the age correction would need to use the average relay age. I think there should also be an event limit, like at NCAAs. A single swimmer shouldn't be able to score in six individual events.
I think this would be a great way to encourage old college teammates to get together and swim at a masters competition and it would also be an excellent way for swimmers who never swam in college to have the opportunity to represent their alma maters. If this was done at a meet like Nationals at would have no effect on the competition as it exists today.
Any thoughts? Is this a good idea?
