I wasn't bucking for "everybody gets an award" because then the awards are meaningless, unless they are participation things. My four year old was very upset to get a participation trophy because everybody got one. He wanted the "age group" trophy and when I explained to him that he actually had to LEARN TO SWIM and enter a race to be considered, he yelled, "I do know how to swim!" But I digress... we talked and now he is proud of his trophy.
But speaking of the "not so fast swimmers" who will probably not score (myself included) I remember FLIGHTS as an age grouper.
In most meets it was an 'A' flight and a 'B' flight and the only separation was times. If you had your 'A' time you were in the 'A' flight... There were point totals for each flight and then the combined team total for both flights. Team awards were based only on the combined total.
That sort of a set up would certainly encourage "slower" (and I use the term loosely) swimmers to race and they would definitely contribute to the team point total.
Flights are easy to set up. For Masters, since there are no time standards like USS, it would be easy to look at each event. For example: 25 men enter the 50-54 100 free. The fastest 12 (or 13) are in the "blue" flight (or whatever designation is chosen) and the rest are in the "white" flight. When you combine the two flights both the fast and not so fast have contributed to, voila, a combined team total.
That might be a different way to approach this whole team thing?
I wasn't bucking for "everybody gets an award" because then the awards are meaningless, unless they are participation things. My four year old was very upset to get a participation trophy because everybody got one. He wanted the "age group" trophy and when I explained to him that he actually had to LEARN TO SWIM and enter a race to be considered, he yelled, "I do know how to swim!" But I digress... we talked and now he is proud of his trophy.
But speaking of the "not so fast swimmers" who will probably not score (myself included) I remember FLIGHTS as an age grouper.
In most meets it was an 'A' flight and a 'B' flight and the only separation was times. If you had your 'A' time you were in the 'A' flight... There were point totals for each flight and then the combined team total for both flights. Team awards were based only on the combined total.
That sort of a set up would certainly encourage "slower" (and I use the term loosely) swimmers to race and they would definitely contribute to the team point total.
Flights are easy to set up. For Masters, since there are no time standards like USS, it would be easy to look at each event. For example: 25 men enter the 50-54 100 free. The fastest 12 (or 13) are in the "blue" flight (or whatever designation is chosen) and the rest are in the "white" flight. When you combine the two flights both the fast and not so fast have contributed to, voila, a combined team total.
That might be a different way to approach this whole team thing?
