Sandbagging? TP + Banana Thread

I'll also take another moment to clarify some of my opinions on sandbagging and seed times... * I really really really hate it when people intentionally sandbag for the purpose of feeling good about themselves because they blew away their heat by 10 seconds in the 50 freestyle. I don't have patience for your fragile ego. All you're doing is bruising someone else's ego in that heat who seeded themselves correctly. * I am not foolish enough to believe that it's possible in masters to have everyone seed themselves perfectly. Masters swimmers have a much larger standard deviation in competition performance than we see in, say, high-school aged club swimming or college swimming. I understand that. I'm not worried about people who are 1 second off in the 50. I'm worried about people who are 10 seconds off in the 50. * My opinion is that sandbagging is not an appropriate solution to "I'm swimming back to back events". Sorry, that's the event order. It's the same thing I tell college coaches at a championship meet when their swimmer is doing back-to-back events. You knew the order of events a long time ago. You knew they'd be back to back. If you can't handle that, then only swim one of the events. (And this is why I shuffle up the event order every year.) * Sandbagging is unfair to the other competitors. If I seed myself correctly, and I'm in, say, the last heat... and you and I are in the same age group and about the same speed... it's unfair to _me_ for you to sandbag and put yourself in the first heat. Part of the reason I pay my entry fees is so that I can come to a meet, and compete against people who are my speed, such as you. Otherwise, a meet isn't any different than people going off the blocks in practice. * For our New England championship meets, we _do_ put wording in the meet information saying that you are expected to seed yourself with your appropriate best time. So if you come to our meets, you are expected to abide by that. We reserve the right to correct your seed time if we decide that you "made a mistake". * I also know that it's hard to pick seed times. It is. I just entered a SCM meet, which will be, I think, my first competition in about 4 years. It took me about 20 minutes to decide on what my seed times should be. Was I inclined to pad it a bit? Absolutely! I haven't raced in a meet in 4 years! So yes, I understand this concern. * As a meet host, I'm always pressured to get more people into the meet. People don't like to get cut out from a meet. I try to get as many people into the pool as possible. We bring in extra officials so that we can not miss a beat on a DQ, and keep the heats moving. (We try to get down to around 7 seconds between heats.) But with 700+ swimmers in a meet, it takes cooperation from everyone to keep the meet moving, and the number one thing is seed times. -Rick

I'll also take another moment to clarify some of my opinions on sandbagging and seed times... * I really really really hate it when people intentionally sandbag for the purpose of feeling good about themselves because they blew away their heat by 10 seconds in the 50 freestyle. I don't have patience for your fragile ego. All you're doing is bruising someone else's ego in that heat who seeded themselves correctly. * I am not foolish enough to believe that it's possible in masters to have everyone seed themselves perfectly. Masters swimmers have a much larger standard deviation in competition performance than we see in, say, high-school aged club swimming or college swimming. I understand that. I'm not worried about people who are 1 second off in the 50. I'm worried about people who are 10 seconds off in the 50. * My opinion is that sandbagging is not an appropriate solution to "I'm swimming back to back events". Sorry, that's the event order. It's the same thing I tell college coaches at a championship meet when their swimmer is doing back-to-back events. You knew the order of events a long time ago. You knew they'd be back to back. If you can't handle that, then only swim one of the events. (And this is why I shuffle up the event order every year.) * Sandbagging is unfair to the other competitors. If I seed myself correctly, and I'm in, say, the last heat... and you and I are in the same age group and about the same speed... it's unfair to _me_ for you to sandbag and put yourself in the first heat. Part of the reason I pay my entry fees is so that I can come to a meet, and compete against people who are my speed, such as you. Otherwise, a meet isn't any different than people going off the blocks in practice. * For our New England championship meets, we _do_ put wording in the meet information saying that you are expected to seed yourself with your appropriate best time. So if you come to our meets, you are expected to abide by that. We reserve the right to correct your seed time if we decide that you "made a mistake". * I also know that it's hard to pick seed times. It is. I just entered a SCM meet, which will be, I think, my first competition in about 4 years. It took me about 20 minutes to decide on what my seed times should be. Was I inclined to pad it a bit? Absolutely! I haven't raced in a meet in 4 years! So yes, I understand this concern. * As a meet host, I'm always pressured to get more people into the meet. People don't like to get cut out from a meet. I try to get as many people into the pool as possible. We bring in extra officials so that we can not miss a beat on a DQ, and keep the heats moving. (We try to get down to around 7 seconds between heats.) But with 700+ swimmers in a meet, it takes cooperation from everyone to keep the meet moving, and the number one thing is seed times. -Rick