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?
I love the idea, but rather than glomming it onto Nationals, why not see if we could schedule it during the SCM season and make it an SCM meet. One of the 'reasons' I hear from former competitive swimmers as to why they don't race Masters is that they don't want to compare their current self to their younger self in terms of times. As very few US college teams ever race in SCM, this would remove that perceived barrier.
I love the idea, but rather than glomming it onto Nationals, why not see if we could schedule it during the SCM season and make it an SCM meet. One of the 'reasons' I hear from former competitive swimmers as to why they don't race Masters is that they don't want to compare their current self to their younger self in terms of times. As very few US college teams ever race in SCM, this would remove that perceived barrier.
really like this idea.
This entire thread has the makings of a great idea!
Sounds fun--so you don't necessarily have to have graduated (or even attended) the college you pick (my college didn't have a swim team).
That's what I would recommend. This idea really has nothing to do with NCAA swimming. It's just a way of representing your alma mater or whatever college you prefer to represent.
My college has an annual alumni swim meet where you compete against current team members and other alumni.
Yes, alumni meets are commonplace, but as far as I know always pit the alumni versus the current members for an individual school. This would give the alumni a chance to compete against other schools.
Sounds fun--so you don't necessarily have to have graduated (or even attended) the college you pick (my college didn't have a swim team).
One thing I'm curious about... track and field has a couple age graded scoring calculators, where you enter your distance, time, and age, and the calculator does the rest.
Are there such things for swimming?
Here's an example of one for running:
www.howardgrubb.co.uk/.../wmalookup06.html
I couldn't seem to find anything comparable on Google for swimming. But always possible I overlooked something.
