"Dara Torres should be the face of United States Masters Swimming"
Brent Rutemiller, October issue Swimming World Magazine
"Of Course, Torres isn't on this trip alone. Aside from the support of Hoffman, her daughter and her coaches, Torres relies on a team. She has a nanny who tends to Tessa, a strength coach, and physical and massage therapists who work her like a piece of dough."
John Lohn, October Swimming World Magazine
With all due respect to Mr. Rutemillier & Mr. Lohn I would suggest that they spend a little more time around the people who not only compete in the meets of our sport but with the people who are the backbone as volunteers in the day to day running of it....Dara's only contribution has been making a few workouts early in her comeback, attending a couple of meets and signing autographs and collecting checks for clinics.
If you want a "face" of Masters Swimming look to Susan Von der Lippe who beat Dara as the first person over 40 to qualify for Trials....and she did it training with a masters team 3x a week...working par time, no nanny, no trainers....no PR person....that to me this is the core of what we are in my opinion.
How about Rob Copeland who somehow manages to run this entire organization, swim extremely well, post on our forum....all without a massage therapist and pilates instructor....again this is what Masters represents...to me.
Dara has done something remarkable for anyone her age... give her credit..but lets see if at some point she wants to time at one of our meets...or be on one of our committee's to help promote masters...without an appearance fee.
Parents
Former Member
I think it's also helpful for people who try out meets for the first time to report back here how it went.
One of the teams in my LMSC recently hosted a meet designed for "newbies". They did a couple of interesting things.
First of all, the first event of the meet was the 50 Free, and EVERYONE was required to swim it.
While the next few events went off the blocks, all of the 50 Free times were used to assemble relay teams. The goal was to create teams that would have as close to the same seed times as possible. (I performed this task using an Excel spreadsheet.) Some of the teams weren't "legal" - one woman and three men, for example - but we didn't care.
I think we had enough swimmers for six relay teams. They didn't finish exactly as predicted (some swimmers swam faster or slower than their original 50 Free times) but it still worked pretty well.
The point of all of this was just to let the newbies have the experience of "racing" in relays. It turned out to be a lot of fun, too.
Anna Lea
I think it's also helpful for people who try out meets for the first time to report back here how it went.
One of the teams in my LMSC recently hosted a meet designed for "newbies". They did a couple of interesting things.
First of all, the first event of the meet was the 50 Free, and EVERYONE was required to swim it.
While the next few events went off the blocks, all of the 50 Free times were used to assemble relay teams. The goal was to create teams that would have as close to the same seed times as possible. (I performed this task using an Excel spreadsheet.) Some of the teams weren't "legal" - one woman and three men, for example - but we didn't care.
I think we had enough swimmers for six relay teams. They didn't finish exactly as predicted (some swimmers swam faster or slower than their original 50 Free times) but it still worked pretty well.
The point of all of this was just to let the newbies have the experience of "racing" in relays. It turned out to be a lot of fun, too.
Anna Lea
