Everybody Swims!!

Jim, Mel, This past spring the Central Masters Swimming Association held a pretty significant meet at Northwestern Univ. Lots of swimmers; lots of fast times. I noticed they were not in the database, which does not surprise me because the meet results are not easy to find on the web. They are at cmsaswim.usms.org/cmsastate.htm. Matt

All the results from the Maryland meets for this year are available on the Maryland LMSC website in the dreaded PDF format. Maybe you don't like it, but it is the only way that all the participants can be sure to read them. If I knew where to send them, I could give them to you in Hytek for 3 of the meets and in Excel for the other 4 meets. I just get tired of posting things in a million places. Very few swimmers are aware of the website this posting thread is discussing.

I'm off to Lucy Johnson's LCM meet in Irvine in a few minutes. I just printed out the top 25 swimmers in all the events I entered, just in case. This is pretty neat! mel

Mel, Thank you for championing this project. I had a blast checking my times and seeing where I stack against a nationwide sampling of swimmers. This type of database will help me set realistic goals for next year. This database provides a great research tool as well when the sample is large enough. I've read a lot of posts related to age based performance. I would be fun to run some of the events and age groups through a statistical analysis. I will encourage my LMSC to post their meets and post a link to the database in our Newsletter. Thanks again, Michael

Matt When u click on ur url it comes up as file not found. Must be a glitch somewhere.

Ah, so that's why getting the results is so difficult! Try http://cmsaswim.usms.org/. Then click on "State Meet Results" (Second from the right.) You'll see the 2002 results broken down by several categories. (And results from previous years' meets. This meet has quietly reached the stature of Zone level Championships, at least judged by number of swimmers, depth of talent, and quality swims. Parking, however, remains an issue...;) ) Joy, thanks for the note. Matt

Swimmers, thanks for the feedback on this thread. The comments are good for us to see. To Matt S. and Barb P. (and other lurkers who haven't mentioned the same comments), I have data-mining software that polls each web site when I bring it up, searching for new information. So, I'm aware of the CMSA and MD web site postings. As I mentioned earlier, the short-course season is much too big for me to handle (and I think that the meets posted on the CMSA and MD sites, that aren't in the database, are the SCY varieties) at the moment. I've been concentrating on LCM and SCM courses only because the number of meets is reasonable. The goal is to include all courses and meets at sometime in the future. This is just the first step. As for the results formats: The most universally-accepted is the USA-Swimming-defined SDIF (Standard Data Interchange Format) file. It can be produced by HyTek's Meet Manager OR by other competing meet management software. Because the database is handled by HyTek, they also accept two other file formats -- the HyTek zipped backup file and the CommLink file. These files are produced largely automatically after the meet director has entered the swimmers info & run the meet. They contain the fewest errors and represent the least investment of time for me. I'm happy to deal with other formats, however. It's just that the rest of the formats require that I do manual conversions to the SDIF files. THIS INEVITABLY LEADS TO ERRORS. As Jim can verify, I recently submitted a meet from Texas that I had manually converted where I listed both male and female swimmers as female because I mis-interpreted a character in the posted results. This may be carrying the unisex thing a bit too far. So, Barb, it's not that I won't use the PDF files. I'd rather invest the work than have the meet excluded from the database. It's just that it would save me time and embarassment if I could just pass the meet directors results file directly to the database. For a small meet, I can do the conversion in about 60 minutes; for a zone meet it has taken me 3-4 hours to do the conversion. But, please, keep advertizing the database. As coaches, or swimmers, take a printout of the top 25 or 50 or whatever with you to big meets to give yourself or your swimmers instant feedback. Talk it up to other swimmers. Put links in newsletters and on web sites. It all helps Keep after meet directors and LMSC officials to submit results. Let me know if there is a club web site that posts results that may not be on a Zone web site or an LMSC web site. I'm pretty aggressive about tracking down these results & will follow up on your tips. !!!I WANT TO MAKE THIS AN INDESPENSIBLE TOOL TO THE USMS SWIMMING COMMUNITY!!! mel

USMS database users, here's an update for the 2002 SCM season. As of 11/13/2002, I'm aware of 31 SCM meets that have been advertized or that have had results posted. There are 21 of these uploaded into the USMS searchable database (www.usms.org/.../toptimes.shtml). They are listed below, possibly not as you may have seen them in meet advertizing. However, the meet date is given for all but the first two, so that interested readers should be able to correlate them with meets as they know them. This is a yield of 77%. 2002-12-31 2002 Albatross Open 2002-12-31 2002 VO2 Min SCM Meet 2002-12-31 SI LMSC SCM Meet, 06/16/02 2002-12-31 SI LMSC SCM Meet, 03/17/02 2002-12-31 2002 Aussi Prep Meet June 29, 2002 2002-12-31 2002 Central Oregon SCM Freestyle Pentathlon May 7 2002-12-31 2002 StarMaster SCM Pentathlon 14 Sept 2002-12-31 2002 George Hale Invitational Sept 21 2002-12-31 2002 St Pete Masters Development Meet Sept 15 2002-12-31 2002 Oak Harbor Pentathlon Sept 28 2002-12-31 2002 Walnut Creek Champs Oct 12 2002-12-31 2002 Orlando Masters SCM Meet Oct 11 2002-12-31 2002 Shelby Bar-B-Q Meet Oct 12 2002-12-31 2002 DCAC Columbus Day Classic Oct 12 2002-12-31 2002 First Colony SCM Meet Oct 5 2002-12-31 2002 Arizona SCM Champs Oct 26 2002-12-31 2002 Lawrence University Meet 2002-12-31 2002 Mission Viejo SCM Meet Oct 27 2002-12-31 2002 SWIM Florida SCM Meet Oct 26 2002-12-31 2002 GRIN Fall Classic Oct 26 2002-12-31 2002 UCLA SCM meet Nov 9 2002-12-31 2002 Dixie Zone Meet Nov 2 2002-12-31 2002 Great Bay Masters meet Nov 10 2002-12-31 2002 NC Fall Invitational Nov 9 Note that all the meters meets listed have a beginning date that is the end of the current year. This reflects the birth date format used for these meets, not the actual date of the meet. For the other seven meets, either I have no posted results or the results are in a form that is unusable to me. These meets are 9 Sep Jewish Community Center meet in Salt Lake City -- no results found 21 Sep 'Senior Olympics' in Hot Springs AR -- no results found 29 Sep San Mateo Masters Marlins meet -- not in a usable format 6 Oct Lancer Fall Classic in Waterford CT -- no results found 20 Oct Pentathlon in San Carlos CA -- no results found 26 Oct Barletta Natatorium meet in Boston -- no results found 9 Nov Kentucky Classic in Owensboro -- results not yet posted. With the exception of the last meet which may yet be posted, I doubt that I'll be able to get the results in for the other meets without help from swimmers who may have access to the info. Mel Dyck

Thanks to Mel and Swim Toad (and all of those other meet directors) for making this database of "all swims." We'll promote in our next NEM News just prior to the meet so that people will have an idea of what kind of swims are in the "bank" before our meet? Good luck to all SCM competitors this weekend.

Croak, croak... Since Mel Dyck has disappeared, the SwimToad must pick up the slack for the searchable database. Going into the last big weekend of SCM competition, there are now 37 meets (of 46 known to the Toad) in the database. Most of the big ones are loaded, with the exception of the Nokia Southern Masters Champs; hopefully that will be done shortly. For those virtual and real swimmers participating in Bob Seltzer's virtual champs this coming weekend, you should be able to see what you need to do to conquer the competition. Good luck! Croakingly yours S Toad