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
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.
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.
