I'm in my late 50s, have been swimming for about 35 years. In h.s. I was a track and CC runner. So I don't know a lot about the tactics of a swim meet, and how meets are conducted. But when my daughter (now in her 20s) joined the swim team in h.s., I got more into the rules, and perusing local high school swim meet results in the newspapers. I know that coaches have lots of varying talent they have to consider and juggle when assigning specific swimmers to an event. And I know that a swimmer is only permitted to swim in four total, two individual events. But when I see something like this, I really scratch my head. In a dual meet, the winning time in the 500fr has a 'per 100' pace faster than the winning times for 100fr and 200fr (and is actually pretty close to the 50fr pace)...which were all won by the other school. The school that won the 500fr lost the meet by a margin that could have been gapped if they'd won just one more event. Presuming that the fast 500 swimmer was in maximum events (others which apparently he didn't point in), why not INSTEAD have him in two of those other events that he certainly would have won (based on his 500 time)? He would have pointed in two events instead of just one, and presumably his team would have won the meet.
Dan
Many other possibilities:
--The 500 time was a misprint.
--The good swimmer was also in all three relays, trying to score the team points there.
--The good swimmer was disqualified in his/her other event.
--The coach didn't realize how close the meet would be.
--The coach made a tactical blunder.
--Other possibilities?
Swimmer may have been trying to make a qualifying time for a higher level meet, and wanted to be as rested as possible for the 500. Coach may have thought it wouldn't impact the overall score, and may have been willing to take the chance to have a swimmer make a state level meet or something.
Did the winning school have the second place finisher in the 500 as well? If you take the kid that won the 500 and put him in a different freestyle event and the other school wins the 500 as a consequence, you are at the same place score-wise as you were originally.
I guess I'm kind of confused as to the question here.
--The good swimmer was also in all three relays, trying to score the team points there.
This is a good possibility. Someone else pointed out that maybe the swimmer was trying for a time cut in the 500.
I also think it's a mistake to assume there's always an emphasis on winning high school dual meets. The coach may use dual meets just to get his/her swimmers into different events and put the emphasis on the best performance possible at the end-of-season conference meet or something like that.
In HS, as one of our team captains and the main distance guy, I worked a lot with our coach to set up the meet line ups ahead of the meet. We would match up the results, count the points, and re-arrange the swimmers to maximize the results. We would often go to other dual meets to scout and watch who was doing what on the other good teams. One is using times from the opposing team, as well as your own team's times to match up and score points. But the other team may not use their swimmers the way you expected, and you don't know that until heading to the blocks for each event and tracking who swam where. The relays would be a real scramble, trying to put enough horsepower in the relay to win, but to not use up a swimmer with a chance to score points in another spot. The possible combinations of events, swimmers and points becomes substantial and conditions can change as the meet roles along, so we had contingency plans if things went awry.
In general we would use meets against weaker teams to give our best swimmers a chance to hit state qualifying times in their "other" events and also to provide a chance for other swimmers on the team to win events and score points. But, there is nothing like a close dual meet to help motivate a good un-tapered swim and hit a state qualifying time.
I think in HS there is generally a larger group of swimmers that can turn in a respectable 50 and even a 100. Sometimes even kids who only started swimming in HS can get pretty fast at the shorter distances. But the conditioning needed to swim a good 200 and 500 is a different story, so the number of kids who can win and place in that event may be a really short list.
HS dual meets are more complex and fun than they may appear; good coaches are working hard figuring out who and how they want to approach their meets, and then adjusting on the fly, so to speak:).
This is a good possibility. Someone else pointed out that maybe the swimmer was trying for a time cut in the 500.
I also think it's a mistake to assume there's always an emphasis on winning high school dual meets. The coach may use dual meets just to get his/her swimmers into different events and put the emphasis on the best performance possible at the end-of-season conference meet or something like that.
Totally agree with this. We had an Olympic swimmer on our high school team - who won a silver in the 1500 when he was a junior. He was basically untouchable in the 500, (4:20) and it would have been kind of unfair to use him as the ringer in pretty much any of the other freestyle events.
So the coach let him do his distance thing, even if the meets were close. In retrospect I think it would have taken away from the team effort somehow. Kind of like that car commercial where one of the pee wee football kids turns into Cam Newton.
