Jim and Michael:
It is easy to be dismissive of the late entrants to the meet after all they are just local entrants those who are barely worthy to swim in a national or world championships. They should have entered the meet much earlier, unlike the other 800 or 3600 swimmers who entered in the last week of the meet.
Well, those entries are providing the profit for the meet organizing committee. Swimming meets are heavy to fixed costs. Adding 1 or 10 more swimmers to a meet does not cost anything so they provide pure profit to the meet. Mel Goldstein has said that if it was up to him, if someone came to him the day before the meet and had a big enough check book, Mel would get him in the meet.
It is also the local people that are providing the volunteers for the meet. All the meets depend on a strong cadre of unpaid workers to get the job done. It is just right that the locals get to compete if there is extra time at the meet.
While many Masters swimmers have made their hotel and travel reservations, I can assure you that many have not made them, either traveling from within the United States or intercontenientally. There are many seats available on the airlines available, albeit not at the cheap prices of earlier this year. We also have hotel rooms available at the same price we were offering earlier this year.
But what are we doing this for? or whom are we doing this for? Nancy Ridout, Pacific's registrar said she was getting upset at all the people who were calling her and emailing her on the last week to either register so they could compete in the games or to transfer team registration so they could compete with their new team.
As you may know, Pacific is the largest LMSC with a huge registration base to start out with and any problem that another LMSC registrar has is magnified by three times with Pacific. Nancy said she was getting very upset. People were calling her saying they needed to register NOW so they could register for the championships. They were overnighting the application so they could register for worlds. Calls and emails were coming in all day and into the night. It gets very frustrating - why couldnt the swimmers have done this on time?
Then she sat back and thought about it. We are bringing back swimmers who have not swam in a masters program in years to US Masters. There are people, who are really looking forward to swimming here and competing. When we bid for the championships, we said that one of the goals of the meet was to spread Masters swimming, both in the United States and through out the world. When she thought about it in this manner, she said her attitude change and she was excited to answer the next call, to bring it the next swimmer into Masters swimming
To everyone else:
It was not the LOC that turned off the switch to register electronically on June 5th. The LOC asked that it be kept on for a few days. For me personally, the minutes of the USMS Executive Committee of June 5, 2006, will make for interesting reading.
If you had problems entering on line, the cookie problem came up, there were problems with the Internet connection, or the dog ate your entry, please contact me at info@2006finamasters.org - we will see what we can do.
The LOC met last night, while there is a lot of work to be done, we are excited. The pools will be fast, the competition keen and we know the swimmers will have a great time. With the exception of the 800 day, the days do not look too lon. We hope you all will be there.
michael
Jim and Michael:
It is easy to be dismissive of the late entrants to the meet after all they are just local entrants those who are barely worthy to swim in a national or world championships. They should have entered the meet much earlier, unlike the other 800 or 3600 swimmers who entered in the last week of the meet.
Well, those entries are providing the profit for the meet organizing committee. Swimming meets are heavy to fixed costs. Adding 1 or 10 more swimmers to a meet does not cost anything so they provide pure profit to the meet. Mel Goldstein has said that if it was up to him, if someone came to him the day before the meet and had a big enough check book, Mel would get him in the meet.
It is also the local people that are providing the volunteers for the meet. All the meets depend on a strong cadre of unpaid workers to get the job done. It is just right that the locals get to compete if there is extra time at the meet.
While many Masters swimmers have made their hotel and travel reservations, I can assure you that many have not made them, either traveling from within the United States or intercontenientally. There are many seats available on the airlines available, albeit not at the cheap prices of earlier this year. We also have hotel rooms available at the same price we were offering earlier this year.
But what are we doing this for? or whom are we doing this for? Nancy Ridout, Pacific's registrar said she was getting upset at all the people who were calling her and emailing her on the last week to either register so they could compete in the games or to transfer team registration so they could compete with their new team.
As you may know, Pacific is the largest LMSC with a huge registration base to start out with and any problem that another LMSC registrar has is magnified by three times with Pacific. Nancy said she was getting very upset. People were calling her saying they needed to register NOW so they could register for the championships. They were overnighting the application so they could register for worlds. Calls and emails were coming in all day and into the night. It gets very frustrating - why couldnt the swimmers have done this on time?
Then she sat back and thought about it. We are bringing back swimmers who have not swam in a masters program in years to US Masters. There are people, who are really looking forward to swimming here and competing. When we bid for the championships, we said that one of the goals of the meet was to spread Masters swimming, both in the United States and through out the world. When she thought about it in this manner, she said her attitude change and she was excited to answer the next call, to bring it the next swimmer into Masters swimming
To everyone else:
It was not the LOC that turned off the switch to register electronically on June 5th. The LOC asked that it be kept on for a few days. For me personally, the minutes of the USMS Executive Committee of June 5, 2006, will make for interesting reading.
If you had problems entering on line, the cookie problem came up, there were problems with the Internet connection, or the dog ate your entry, please contact me at info@2006finamasters.org - we will see what we can do.
The LOC met last night, while there is a lot of work to be done, we are excited. The pools will be fast, the competition keen and we know the swimmers will have a great time. With the exception of the 800 day, the days do not look too lon. We hope you all will be there.
michael
