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
Emmett,
What a truly nutty, brilliant idea! I am organizing the alumni swim meet for my old college. I figured I'd do a simple sprint pentathalon format, but this seems so much more interesting. I'll check with the coach and see if he has any problems with doing something like this.
We did a couple of other things in St. Louis Masters (aka SLAM, great abbreviation) to spice up our meet schedule. Like a lot of USMS "teams," we are an umbrella organization for several different clubs and workout groups in our area. It gives us the ghost of a chance of being able to form a relay. (In the 2002 LCNs SLAM fielded 200 mixed relays because I recruited my father and my sister, both living in Pittsburgh, and we filled out the relays with a couple other SLAM swimmers.) What we wanted to do was revive a little of the rivalry among the SLAM workout groups, and our friends across the river from Illinois Masters, to make our meets more interesting. We simply asked everyone to ID their workout group, and we had a menu with write-ins accepted. We then scored each event by age group similar to a college dual meet (individual events 5-3-1, relays 10-6-2). As it turned out, the key to "winning" was to recruit as many swimmers as possible, since most age group-events rarely went 3 swimmers deep. However, that was partially the point. We wanted to create incentives for more SLAMers to come to local meets.
The other idea we used to add a little fun to the winter Mile Meet (a 1000/1650 meet clearly needs something) was to give it a theme. We called it "Open Water Swim in February." I put out the meet fliers using this faux-Jamaican accent. Prior to the start of the meet, we had an ugly Hawaiian shirt/tropical costume contest, with a local swim shop donating some been-on-the-shelf-for-months, white elephant items to give as prizes for the costume contest. Some swimmers brought their children just to compete in the costume contest. We also served gatoraide mixed with pinapple juice, and pineapple chunks on toothpicks.
I think some of our stuff is still up on the web site www.swimslam.org
Question about your touch-pad "workout" meet. Why couldn't you sanction it as an official (if screwey)meet?
Matt
Emmett,
What a truly nutty, brilliant idea! I am organizing the alumni swim meet for my old college. I figured I'd do a simple sprint pentathalon format, but this seems so much more interesting. I'll check with the coach and see if he has any problems with doing something like this.
We did a couple of other things in St. Louis Masters (aka SLAM, great abbreviation) to spice up our meet schedule. Like a lot of USMS "teams," we are an umbrella organization for several different clubs and workout groups in our area. It gives us the ghost of a chance of being able to form a relay. (In the 2002 LCNs SLAM fielded 200 mixed relays because I recruited my father and my sister, both living in Pittsburgh, and we filled out the relays with a couple other SLAM swimmers.) What we wanted to do was revive a little of the rivalry among the SLAM workout groups, and our friends across the river from Illinois Masters, to make our meets more interesting. We simply asked everyone to ID their workout group, and we had a menu with write-ins accepted. We then scored each event by age group similar to a college dual meet (individual events 5-3-1, relays 10-6-2). As it turned out, the key to "winning" was to recruit as many swimmers as possible, since most age group-events rarely went 3 swimmers deep. However, that was partially the point. We wanted to create incentives for more SLAMers to come to local meets.
The other idea we used to add a little fun to the winter Mile Meet (a 1000/1650 meet clearly needs something) was to give it a theme. We called it "Open Water Swim in February." I put out the meet fliers using this faux-Jamaican accent. Prior to the start of the meet, we had an ugly Hawaiian shirt/tropical costume contest, with a local swim shop donating some been-on-the-shelf-for-months, white elephant items to give as prizes for the costume contest. Some swimmers brought their children just to compete in the costume contest. We also served gatoraide mixed with pinapple juice, and pineapple chunks on toothpicks.
I think some of our stuff is still up on the web site www.swimslam.org
Question about your touch-pad "workout" meet. Why couldn't you sanction it as an official (if screwey)meet?
Matt
