Saw one of the more interesting articles about the past, present, and future aspects of competitive swimming on SwimInfo's website the other day from Wayne Goldsmith..
www.swiminfo.com/.../7720.asp
I think it provokes a great deal of thought in this arena and specifically within this group since many of us either participate, have friends/relatives who participate, or remember participating in competitive swim meets.
I particularly appreciate the parents perspective provided in the article. While I have little children (5 and almost 3 years old), the thought of going through what my parents did with me makes me hesitate to sign up for the first set of SwimAmerica lessons or summer club swim team to introduce them to swimming. While I swam through my school age years, I didn't really consider just what my parents had to go through right along with me.. I was always thinking about what i was going through. Wow!
Check out the article and see what you think...
Rob
Parents
Former Member
Here's an idea that might be interesting: use a formula like the IPS to rank each swim at a meet and sum the points to come up with team scores instead of or in addition to the point scores based on placements. Under such a system all the swimmers would contribute to their team score and their personal score would reflect their own performances rather than their performance relative to who else is at the meet.
As an analogy, consider marks in school: would you want a marking system based purely on rank rather than individual achievement? There is a place for awards for ranking highest but those not in the top ten shouldn't necessarily become zeros.
Times provide one way to measure individual results but an IPS-like formula can be applied over different events.
IPS Calculator
There are drawbacks of course, but I leave identifying them as an exercise for the reader :)
Here's an idea that might be interesting: use a formula like the IPS to rank each swim at a meet and sum the points to come up with team scores instead of or in addition to the point scores based on placements. Under such a system all the swimmers would contribute to their team score and their personal score would reflect their own performances rather than their performance relative to who else is at the meet.
As an analogy, consider marks in school: would you want a marking system based purely on rank rather than individual achievement? There is a place for awards for ranking highest but those not in the top ten shouldn't necessarily become zeros.
Times provide one way to measure individual results but an IPS-like formula can be applied over different events.
IPS Calculator
There are drawbacks of course, but I leave identifying them as an exercise for the reader :)
