2-day championship meet order of events?

Hi Joe: We have a State LMSC Championship meet in Michigan that is very similar to yours in Central. For about the last 20 years we try to rotate it into different loctions and different hosts around the State of Michigan. We also try to go to the best swimming facilities in the State and usually we swim in a 50 meter pool with the capablity of using 2 pools if necessary. Sometimes it's hard to get a host and a facility willing to do the work necessary to run an exceptional meet. Also this is the biggest swim meet in the State and also we have our Annual LMSC Meeting which is the most important gathering for the LMSC to vote on issues affecting the National Organization, the LMSC, your local team, and yourself as a swimmer. This is also the only meet in the State that we have team and individual scores and have awards for both besides the individual event age group awards. In the last 7 years we have run the same schedule of events for the 2.5 day multi event championship and people seem to like it. On Friday night we offer the distance events and you must choose between the 1000 Free and the 1650 Free but you can not swim both. This is the only time the 1650 is offered but the 1000 is offered on Sunday so it works for the distance swimmer and you can also swim the 500 Free and the 400 IM. These events are also offered on Saturday but you can only swim them once. You can only swim 2 events on Friday evening and you are not allowed to swim those again. Usually we are done between 9:00 and 9:30 PM and depending on the size of the meet we could be finished by 8:30 PM. The other 2 days we run the other events except th 1650 Free. We have this divided into 4 sessions and we usually take a scheduled 2 hour break on Saturday for people to get something to eat and also to have our annual LMSC meeting. We try to start the events in exactly 2 hours from the finish of the morning session. We have warm up an hour before we start so we only have an hour of people not being in the pool. Sometimes we can be a little late starting but usually we start pretty close to the time scheduled. Before we begin the afternoon session we make annoncements about the LMSC meeting and give out the LMSC awards for the year such as Service, Performance, Lifetime Achievement, and Courage/ Tenacity award for continuing to swim depite illness and injury. We usually get done around 5:00 PM on Saturday after the finish of the 500 Free. We have a 7 individual event limitation and you are eligible to swim up to 4 relays, one of each category. We have both 200 relays individual and mixed for a total of 4 relay events and we usually end our morning session with a relay and have a relay before the distance event for the afternooon session. To help people that have to travel far distances we offer the 1000 Free during the lunch break on Sunday if people don't want to swim it as a last event. George Newman, one of our officals thought of this and this has been very popular in the last 7 years. At the end of the meet we have an Awards Ceremony and we make presentations of individual age group high point awards and 6 team awards for the high point teams in Large Team and Small Team Divisions. We have awards for Women, Men, and Combined for the teams. One of the reasons why I think this has worked is because this meet is as big if not bigger for team competition than individual competiton. A lot of people don't swim the same events every year and I know for a fact that people swim the 200 Fly, 400 IM, and some other difficult events because they can score higher for both there team and individually for the higher placings. The bottom line is your never going to have schedule that everyone likes and thinks is fair. Since the Nationals has a schedule of rotating events you still hear complaints about it. I don't really know if anyone has tried to copy or pattern there events for 4 years like that in the rule book. I think LMSC's and Zones have to go with what has been successful and be aware of other factors involved such as the facility,volunteer, and host restrictions. We have not had ? regarding our events in 7 years so if it isn't broke don't fix it. I think a lot of Championships are run that way. In the next month our Championship meet flyer will be up on the Michigan Masters website to look at and its the same event format has previous years.

Here are some tips: If you are doing 50s, 100s, and 200s of every stroke keep the 50's and 200's on the same day, and the 100 on the other day. Do not put the 400 IM on the same day as the 200 *** or 200 fly. Do not put the 50 back right after the 100 free. This happens all the time and is an error. The best advice I can give is that when you group events together to make the line up, group the events as sprint events, middle distance, and distance. Try not to run 2 events in a row of the same ilk. Last, the reason the NCAA puts the mile on the last day of its' championship is because the mile will ruin the rest of your meet. It takes 7-10 days to recover from a mile. Time may make it impossible to put it on the last day, but it should be done that way.

You could just make every other event a breaststroke event and that way you get to warm down between the real events :).

Tom, Sorry to inform you that USMS has a 5 event maximum swims per day. Who knows you're a great flier and you might be a "good" breastroker if you give it a chance. They're both short axis strokes. Hey, I would swim everything if given the chance. Okay, all kinding aside. Joe, here is my suggestion: Day 1------Day 2 200 stroke and 50 stroke-----100 stroke (i don't mean all 200's on one day.) i.e. 200 fly 50 fly-----100 fly 100 back----200 back 50 back 100 ***------200 *** 50 *** 100 free and 500 free------200 free and 50 free 200 IM --------400 IM and 100 IM try to put breastroke and fly apart from the IM's either 400 IM/500 first.