What can make a potentially great pool and swim meet (78-80 degree deep water, wide lanes, great gutter system, good starting blocks, great lighting, large scoreboard, excellent officials, etc.) into a mediocre one? The lane lines.
We recently swam our championships in a new state-of-the-art pool. The only problem was the slack lane lines. The water was very choppy and continued that way throughout the whole race. They served no more purpose than the old “floaties” we used 45 years ago. They were so loose they visibly rose and fell with the waves and had so many horizontal waves they looked like serpents at the surface. The lane lines did not cut the waves but rather rode them. When there was a race with an open lane, the waves pushed the lane lines well into the free lane. Predictably overall times were not as fast as they could have been.
It is not necessary to have the lane lines are tight as a piano wire in order for them to be effective, but tightening them up for a meet is an area that is most often neglected. We work too hard at our craft not to be given every opportunity to swim as fast as the pool allows.
Parents
Former Member
From the perspective of the facility operator (I've got a dozen or so years experience in this capacity), lap swimmers are, in many cases, the low priority user group on the list. A couple of the posts in this thread serve to illustrate at least some of the reasons why.
It has been my experience that lap swimmers tend to be the most demanding (in some cases, militant) patrons in the facility. They tend to be more territorial (that's MY lane) than other groups. If there is no resident swim team, lap swimmers are the ONLY group that complains when the water gets above 82 degrees. They often think, perhaps because there are lane lines and a stripe on the bottom, that they have a greater right to use the pool than do others. They often labor under the delusion that lap swimming is a better or more worthy use of pool space that other endeavors.
Are ALL lap swimmers like this? No. But it only takes a few at any given facility to give ALL the lap swimmers there a bad name.
My experience has been (and when facility operators compare notes I see the same trend) that the people who cause the greatest headaches for the operator generally come from the ranks of lap swimmers.
Perhaps this all stems from spending countless hours staring at the black line with the metronome of countless strokes burning a hole through the part of the brain responsible for sociable behavior. In the many years I operated large facilities the ONLY people I've had to suspend privileges for have been lap swimmers. In all but one case it was for antisocial behavior (grabbing someone else's equipment and throwing it out of the pool, if witnessed by the lifeguard, would get you a day or so of cooling off at the very least).
As someone who now makes his living from pool time and space rented for swimmers to use (my Masters team, clinics, lessons), I realize that we are guests of the facility and that our privilege to use the space we rent can disappear in a heartbeat if I, or one of my swimmers, abuse that privilege.
I'm aware of more than a few cases where facility operators have expanded lesson or water aerobic programs at the expense of lap swim or group swim opportunities. Sometimes this is strictly a dollar/resources driven action (lap swimmers are generally among the smallest contributors to the financial strength of the facility yet their space/participant ratio is high compared to other groups - our water aerobics would routinely have a dozen or more people per lane). In other cases there are contributing factors as noted above.
Whether you are a member of a facility, a member of a group that rents facility space, or you simply pay a daily lap fee, you have a privilege that is no greater, no more worthy, no more sacred than the privilege others at the facility have. Abuse yours and it will disappear - that's as it should be. But the real shame is when one or two people screw up lap or group swimming privileges for others.
From the perspective of the facility operator (I've got a dozen or so years experience in this capacity), lap swimmers are, in many cases, the low priority user group on the list. A couple of the posts in this thread serve to illustrate at least some of the reasons why.
It has been my experience that lap swimmers tend to be the most demanding (in some cases, militant) patrons in the facility. They tend to be more territorial (that's MY lane) than other groups. If there is no resident swim team, lap swimmers are the ONLY group that complains when the water gets above 82 degrees. They often think, perhaps because there are lane lines and a stripe on the bottom, that they have a greater right to use the pool than do others. They often labor under the delusion that lap swimming is a better or more worthy use of pool space that other endeavors.
Are ALL lap swimmers like this? No. But it only takes a few at any given facility to give ALL the lap swimmers there a bad name.
My experience has been (and when facility operators compare notes I see the same trend) that the people who cause the greatest headaches for the operator generally come from the ranks of lap swimmers.
Perhaps this all stems from spending countless hours staring at the black line with the metronome of countless strokes burning a hole through the part of the brain responsible for sociable behavior. In the many years I operated large facilities the ONLY people I've had to suspend privileges for have been lap swimmers. In all but one case it was for antisocial behavior (grabbing someone else's equipment and throwing it out of the pool, if witnessed by the lifeguard, would get you a day or so of cooling off at the very least).
As someone who now makes his living from pool time and space rented for swimmers to use (my Masters team, clinics, lessons), I realize that we are guests of the facility and that our privilege to use the space we rent can disappear in a heartbeat if I, or one of my swimmers, abuse that privilege.
I'm aware of more than a few cases where facility operators have expanded lesson or water aerobic programs at the expense of lap swim or group swim opportunities. Sometimes this is strictly a dollar/resources driven action (lap swimmers are generally among the smallest contributors to the financial strength of the facility yet their space/participant ratio is high compared to other groups - our water aerobics would routinely have a dozen or more people per lane). In other cases there are contributing factors as noted above.
Whether you are a member of a facility, a member of a group that rents facility space, or you simply pay a daily lap fee, you have a privilege that is no greater, no more worthy, no more sacred than the privilege others at the facility have. Abuse yours and it will disappear - that's as it should be. But the real shame is when one or two people screw up lap or group swimming privileges for others.
