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"
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I don't think the top swimmers are the only ones that swim only1 or 2 meets a year. In many states in both long course and short course there's only a handful of meets. Arizona only had two long course meets this past summer. The next close ones were California and from Tucson, Irvine California is a good 7 to 8 hours in a car. Also, many of the SPMA swimmers and some of the Arizona swimmers are not entered in Nationals because the Irvine Meet which was the SouthWest Championship meet was held this past weekend. Some of these people could have placed in the top ten at nationals but since its in Cleveland Ohio and a week after the Irvine meet they decide not to attend nationals.
I don't think the top swimmers are the only ones that swim only1 or 2 meets a year. In many states in both long course and short course there's only a handful of meets. Arizona only had two long course meets this past summer. The next close ones were California and from Tucson, Irvine California is a good 7 to 8 hours in a car. Also, many of the SPMA swimmers and some of the Arizona swimmers are not entered in Nationals because the Irvine Meet which was the SouthWest Championship meet was held this past weekend. Some of these people could have placed in the top ten at nationals but since its in Cleveland Ohio and a week after the Irvine meet they decide not to attend nationals.
