Super teams

Dividing catagories at nationals really is not a solution. The changes from small, medium, and large to 1-10th overall is a small change, but does not get to the core issues. There are two "real" issues: 1. There is a HUGE difference in the number of registered swimmers in each LMSC (and for that matter, the total human population within the LMSC boundries). 2. Each LMSC either encourages or discourages the formation of "clubs" within each LMSC. The potential solutions or things that would impact "superteams" are: 1. Re-defining boundries for the LMSC so one LMSC does not have a dispreporationate number of all registered USMS swimmers ( i.e. divide Pacific and perhaps other LMSC into 6-7 smaller LMSCs). 2. Work with Registrars in the existing 53 LMSC to encourage formation of more "club"s and limit the number of people who register as "superteam" (or basically affiliated with an LMSC instead of a "true club" or workout group). 3. Require all swimmers to register within the LMSC they live and either declare a "true club"/workout group or be unattached. I'm sure AnnaLea Roof, current chair of the USMS Registrar Committee, could facilitate a dialog between the registrars. Re-defining LMSC boundries would be a HUGE change and would probably meet with a lot of resistance in the HOD, especially from the large LMSC which could be divided into smaller ones. Maybe this could be brought to the attention of the governance committee/task force, and ideas could be proposed and review by them as well. Anthony Thompson. LMSC Chair Missouri Valley

There is a great point a few threads back. What would happen if a super team only had a few people at nationals. Aren't people more likely to go to nationals if it is held closer to wher they live? Would you determine what catergory each team falls into by the total number of registered swimmers at the LMSC or by the number of swimmers at the meet? Also, I've been to meets in the past where only one person shows up from a very large team. But he won all six of the events inwhich he was registered. He happened to be visiting his grand parents. This issue seems very complicated to me and I almost wonder if in reality itis an issue. Could it ever be solved?

What if for instance DAM (club classification with 450 registered swimmers) had 200 participants at natl's and NEM (superteam classification with 1070 reg. swimmers) only had 50? How is this better than the small, medium, large classification recently voted out? Regardless of how you are formed (club vs. superteam) or the number of registered swimmers - divisions by number of PARTICIPANTS seemed to make reasonable sense. Here, there are a lot of dinky little teams practicing at dinky little pools at rec centers that don't really want them there. In many states where swimming is not as popular (read probably not CA, TX, FL) there aren't the facilities available with generous pool time to build strong club teams. What about the density of the population near the facilities to draw a team? Is it fair for my dinky little club team (that swims at the dinky little pool with 6 dinky little hours per WEEK for the masters team) that has say 6 to 8 swimmers at nat'ls to compete in the same division with a club team that brings 50 swimmers (and has the blessings of 5 workouts per DAY)? Geographical issues (facility resources, population density - or lack of either) seem like an insurmountable handicap.

Jerry has brought up some interesting points that I want to address and try to explain why the old system of making categories (small, medium and large) based on entered swimmers at nationals didn't work well. In theory, it does sound good. Small teams compete against teams with similar numbers. Same with medium and large teams. The reality of the situation was that we had several problems. 1) It was difficult to divide the teams into logical categories. In many meets, only two or three teams would be in the large category (the closest geographically). The division between small and medium teams was even more diffucult. A team with 24 swimmers was medium and a team with 23 swimmers was small. One team would have a fun meet and have a good chance of winning a national championship. The other would be competing with teams more than twice its size in the medium division. 2) Scoring anamolies. We also had problems when the medium category only had 2 or 3 teams. A team could only score a few points and be third place at nationals, while a team in the smaller category would score more points and be 4th in the small team division (no banner). Based on the problems that existed, the house of delegates approved a rule change that allows us to score places 1 - 10 for combined, men and women at nationals. The teams that scored in the small and medium teams divisions in the past will score in this new system in most years.

I agree it is not always the easiest/fairest to implement (s/m/l), but I don't see how club/superteam makes it any better.

I want to borrow Jerry's soapbox for a minute. He and others have brought up a number of issues regarding the sizes of clubs and superclubs being the same size. I was curious, so I emailed our national database administrator and asked for that information. Using the current 2005 registration numbers, I have divided the clubs into two groups. Superclubs are ones that divide their membership into chapter, teams, workout groups or some other names and compete in these groups within their LMSC, but compete as a combined group at nationals. When in doubt, I looked at the LMSC registrtation forms and posted meet results on their website. This cause me to categorize MOVY and VMST as clubs rather than combined clubs. NEM 1070 CMS 984 METR 921 IM 761 PNA 760 NCMS 603 ARIZ 565 FACT 397 OREG 393 SKY 384 GSM 376 NIAG 376 MICH 328 O*H* 267 GAJA 232 MINN 199 CONN 195 AKMS 104 average superclub size is 495 and the median size is 393 average club size is 114 and the median is 90 (the club numbers were collected only on the top 100 clubs. If we did all clubs, that number drops to a mean of 37) DAM 450 WMAC 367 VMST 357 ISF 303 WCM 299 SDSM 291 TCAM 273 GOLD 267 MARY 243 SLAM 214 USF 204 UCLA 199 MAM 190 SCAM 184 MOVY 181 REDT 167 1776 161 UCI 158 MELO 157 ANCM 157 SPM 152 CRUZ 151 MVM 148 TXLA 146 STAN 145 IAMA 141 NOVA 140 TSUN 135 RINC 133 MESC 128 BMW 123 MVN 122 Observations - combined clubs dominate indepentend clubs in size. On average, there is a difference of over 300 athletes. Only one club , Davis Aquatic Masters is large enough to be listed in the top 13 teams in the country based on size.

Mark, I agree with your comment that superclubs were less of an issue under the old system of scoring. Of course, the old system was very arbitrary in the way it was implemented. I think that would still exist if we went to 4 levels of team size or 7 as Jerry suggests. What do you do when there is only a 1 swimmer difference between categories? In the past we didn't have a solution.

Jerry, It is not my suggestions that we group the club based on size, but rather how they are organized. The super clubs have a definite advantage due to their size. True, only a certain % of your club will swim in nationals when you have to travel. I beleive that is true of all teams, not just NCMS. If we did divide scoring into more divisions, it would just create more opportunities for anomilies in the scoring to exist. Plus, I don't think we want a system where everyone is a winner. Seven divisions would approach that.

Swim Freak, What you say regarding divisions based on number of participants seems to make sense. The problem has always been in the implementation. As an example, take a look at the men's division of the 2004 SC Nationals in Indy. www.usms.org/.../teamdivisions.pdf Michigan Masters has 33 swimmers and they are in the large team division. Rocky Mountain Masters has 32 and they are in the medium division. New England Masters has 13 swimmers and they are also in the medium divison. The largerest small team had 12 swimmers. There is no big gap that clearly distinguishes large from medium from small with the exception of Illinois Masters (twice the size of the host, Indy SwimFit). This has always been the problem with divisions set up by participant size at the meet.

I think having a combined SUPERTEAM and combined club team division would simplify things immensely. At least we know that club team numbers are constant (for the most part and can be registrar verified), the SUPERTEAMS could be any number, especially if there are an exponential number of small teams popping up and disbanding almost daily. No one knows who will go to Nationals at any given year, especially in respect to location as has been mentioned several times. If there are just the two divisions and 1-10, that's only 20 categories total. I'd rather take my chances against DAM (even with their huge membership) than the whole state of Illinois. Mark Mattson, I knew you'd leave the dark side for sunny California! :p Karen