This is somewhat related to another post I just started (Top Ten conerns). I noticed in the top ten list a number of swimmers (generally very fast swimmers) who swam their first nationals (or any other masters meet) in 5 years due to being in a new age group. I state this by looking at the past few years top ten lists and not seeing their names. Is this a good thing for masters swimming? Swimmers whose only affiliation with masters swimming is showing up to one meet every 5 years to break a record. These records should be owned by people that are true masters swimmers.
What is a true masters swimmers?- Perhaps doing a few meets a year might work. When I swam on an age group team as a child, I know in order to qualify for our championship meet, we had to swim at least 3 regular meets. Perhaps a rule like that for Nationals could begin to fix this problem-
If not, many of our national records will be held by "ringers"
Here are some suggestion I have in regards to those really good and fast swimmers who only show up every so often:
1. Make them wear SCUBA weight belts to mitigate their speediness.
2. Put a GPS transmitter on them during the week, heck the whole year, so we can verify if they are training enough to swim fast when they do show up.
3. Award first place not to the faster person but to the person who comes to the most meets. That way, the grinders are the victors!
4. Throw out the fastest and slowest times from all events, by age group. That way you only have to train to be second best.
I think this is crazy. Master is about inclusion, not exclusion. So what if they show up every few years. They aren't eating Ho-Hos in between. They are training like the rest of us.
Here are some suggestion I have in regards to those really good and fast swimmers who only show up every so often:
1. Make them wear SCUBA weight belts to mitigate their speediness.
2. Put a GPS transmitter on them during the week, heck the whole year, so we can verify if they are training enough to swim fast when they do show up.
3. Award first place not to the faster person but to the person who comes to the most meets. That way, the grinders are the victors!
4. Throw out the fastest and slowest times from all events, by age group. That way you only have to train to be second best.
I think this is crazy. Master is about inclusion, not exclusion. So what if they show up every few years. They aren't eating Ho-Hos in between. They are training like the rest of us.
