May/June cover of USMS Swimmer

I'll throw in one "out of the box" line of thought. I have heard it expressed that swimming is more similar to a martial art than it is to a sport like running or cycling in that skill plays a dominant role. This leads to two thoughts: 1) perhaps there ought to be a stream of masters swimming that concentrates on individual achievement rather than competition, i.e. in martial arts they often define certain levels of proficiency that one attempts to achieve and whether you achieve them is not a competitive thing it is an individual thing. A yellow belt isn't thrown into competition with the black belts. Which leads to a second thought: 2) in martial arts no one would claim that a yellow belt and a black belt are fairly matched because they are the same age. Picture an additional page in the results that listed the swimmers that achieved their yellow belt in butterfly, the swimmers that achieved their green belt in *** stroke, etc. Possibly each swimmer's time could be ranked with an IPS type score relative to the time standard for their "belt level". I would suggest that masters swimming meets are designed primarily for the black belts of swimming and the insistance that the yellow belts should go up against black belts of the same age might suit the black belts ok but probably isn't the optimal experience for the yellow belts.

I'll throw in one "out of the box" line of thought. I have heard it expressed that swimming is more similar to a martial art than it is to a sport like running or cycling in that skill plays a dominant role. This leads to two thoughts: 1) perhaps there ought to be a stream of masters swimming that concentrates on individual achievement rather than competition, i.e. in martial arts they often define certain levels of proficiency that one attempts to achieve and whether you achieve them is not a competitive thing it is an individual thing. A yellow belt isn't thrown into competition with the black belts. Which leads to a second thought: 2) in martial arts no one would claim that a yellow belt and a black belt are fairly matched because they are the same age. Picture an additional page in the results that listed the swimmers that achieved their yellow belt in butterfly, the swimmers that achieved their green belt in *** stroke, etc. Possibly each swimmer's time could be ranked with an IPS type score relative to the time standard for their "belt level". I would suggest that masters swimming meets are designed primarily for the black belts of swimming and the insistance that the yellow belts should go up against black belts of the same age might suit the black belts ok but probably isn't the optimal experience for the yellow belts.