Don't want to start a screamfest, but the controversial issue of "getting enough rest" between events led me to wonder --- how do you get an order of events that is somewhat uniformly fair?
Since I'm apparently challenging John Smith for most annoying masters swimmer, I'll just say that I have been aggravated by the order of events in most of my recent meets. As a fly-backer-er, somewhat odd, it seems that those events are always close together. I guess the fly-*** or fly-free or all free combos are much more common. I have basically given up swimming the 100 IM and haven't swum the 100 back in SCY in 2 years. My last meet, the 100 fly and 100 back were within minutes of each other, and unlike Chris Stevenson and Jeff Roddin, I admittedly didn't have the chops to do both. At my Dec. taper meet, all my best events were on Saturday. At anther meet, all the 200s were in the first half of the meet and all the sprints in the second half, annoying almost everyone and causing a lot of scratches. I have also noticed the inequity between rest for freestylers and strokers. Folks entering the 5 pack freestyle (50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 or 1650), very common set of entries, always have adequate rest because these events are always spaced out pretty well. So it's pretty easy for freestylers to think others are whiney, since they never experience the rest problem.
So how do you fix these inequities and get a fair lineup of events? At a minimum, can't meet directors change the order of events each year to attempt to provide some equity? Or have a 15 minute break scheduled somewhere? This would probably reduce whining and the apparently repugnant practice of sandbagging to get more rest. Since I only swim 5 meets a year or so, it'd be nice to attempt to swim reasonably well. Swimming more meets is just not an option. There's obviously no way to make everyone happy all the time, but it seems like the system could be improved.
As a meet director, this topic hits home! I have a group of 5 folks I ask about meet orders: sprinter, distance, flyer, backstroker and breaststroker, with some of us overlapping.
Each meet we sit down to talk about the order of events to come up with something that would work best for the 5 of us, figuring we probably account for 98% of meet participants. Every meet is going to get at least one complaint about the order, but we tried our best to make things as fair for as many as we could.
As for breaks, USMS doesn't have the USAS 4-hour rule, but we do still have time limits on occasion. For our zone meet, we moved things around to have a majority of our faster-moving events on the day we have to be out!
As a meet director, this topic hits home! I have a group of 5 folks I ask about meet orders: sprinter, distance, flyer, backstroker and breaststroker, with some of us overlapping.
Each meet we sit down to talk about the order of events to come up with something that would work best for the 5 of us, figuring we probably account for 98% of meet participants. Every meet is going to get at least one complaint about the order, but we tried our best to make things as fair for as many as we could.
As for breaks, USMS doesn't have the USAS 4-hour rule, but we do still have time limits on occasion. For our zone meet, we moved things around to have a majority of our faster-moving events on the day we have to be out!
