Time to take advantage of our diverse on-line community....
A few alums from my college are considering starting an annual alumni swim meet that is used as a fund-raiser for the current swim team. The college is in the process of sticking shovels into the ground for a new pool, and we'd like to contribute a new scoreboard, touch pads, etc.
I am just starting to brainstorm and would love to hear from anyone that has participated in a college alumni meet....keep in mind that this is a DIII school, successful but not insanely serious about our training when we were there, much less now that we're all out of school. This is designed to be lighthearted and to poke fun at ourselves, not for anything to brag about. It's a close alumni group, with a web site and a lot of contact with the college.
Two questions:
* Anyone ever experience a meet that has any type of "age" or "weight" (tee hee!) adjustments for an event? Example, age adjusting a 50 free to slant it towards the money-giving alumni?
* Any ideas for a t-shirt slogan that pokes fun at being old and slow alumni?
Thanks in advance,
Laura Smith
Garden State Masters
LauraAswim@aol.com
Laura,
I’ve always liked “Age, Deceit, Cunning, and Treachery can Defeat Youth and Skill” as an appropriate slogan for t-shirts.
As for handicapping the race, I would suggest something like 0.2 seconds per 50 per year out of school. So someone who graduated 10 years ago would get 4 seconds deducted from her time in the 100 Free. Also, as a fund raiser, alums could buy additional time deductions. In that case the slogan could be “Age, Deceit, Cunning, Treachery, and Money can Defeat Youth and Skill”.
This past year we did 0.10 per 25 per year out of school. (Three years ago, we did 0.15 per 25 per year, and it was too much.)
Also make sure you do 25's. Very fun.
Let people buy additional handicaps. Perhaps $10 per 0.01 second per 25. So for $200, you get 0.10 off for a 50 event, ot 0.20 off for a 25 event. Use of fins - $500 per 25. Things like that.
-Rick
My college alumni meet was always great fun. Here is how we kept it competitive:
1) only do short races
2) try to start a rivalry: Alumni vs Varisty. At the beginning of the meet, have an alum give a speech about how much harder it was in the "old" days.
So scratch off the 1000, 500, 400IM, 200IM and 200 of any stroke. No one wants to do those races at an alumni meet.
Also have a featured race. We made the 200 medly relay the "Main Event." Our varisty can obviously wip the Alumni so what we do to keep it close was - instead of A relay, B relay etc. - we did Freshman relay, Sophomore relay, Jr relay and Sr relay. The fr., soph, and jr. relays know ahead of time that they are not supposed to win so really the race is between the alumni and the seniors. Because of that format, the alumni have won the relay for 6 years running.
And the coach should encourage trash talking (friendly of course) between the two groups. Make it competitive, because at the end of the day, that is the only way for it to be fun.
I was at a 'fund' raising meet recently ( it wasn't for an alumni group.) The relays were mixed--age group swimmers and parents/grandparents--the relay teams weren't formed until/during the meet--it was fun trying to get the best age group swimmers on your relay team. The teams turned out to be fairly balanced and competitive. The entrance fee for the relay event was all they 'charged' for this mixed team, but maybe the 'alumni teams' at your event could 'buy' a partictular swimmer... in silent auction form... the team with the highest bid gets the swimmer on his/her team.
Sounds like yall are going to have fun!
Elaine
