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.
Parents
Former Member
In some of the smaller meets around here they have "choice" events so that you have two slots in which you can swim a given event, you could swim the 50 fly in the 50 fly or the 50 choice for example. Having multiple slots in which to swim a race means you may not get to race against someone in an event, but in smaller meets you can't count on racing someone of your own speed anyway. These have been a life saver this year as many of the meets seem to have put their free and fly events back to back and those are the only two strokes I seriously swim in meets.
One thing I've been discussing with people lately is encouraging clubs to put on time trials within their regular workout schedules. The intent is to allow people who would not normally participate in meets due to time constraints to get official times. With luck some of these people might get addicted and start going to meets, and even if not they are getting better value for their membership. An option would be to have a schedule for these time trials and combine the results into a virtual meet sort of like the postal events but purely online. Again, you don't get the head to head racing unless you have someone in your club to race, but you get a chance to swim your events without travel time, without suboptimal event ordering, without endless heats, etc.. Developing the infrastructure for officials for these might also add to the general pool of officials for meets and experience gained might encourage more clubs to hold meets.
In some of the smaller meets around here they have "choice" events so that you have two slots in which you can swim a given event, you could swim the 50 fly in the 50 fly or the 50 choice for example. Having multiple slots in which to swim a race means you may not get to race against someone in an event, but in smaller meets you can't count on racing someone of your own speed anyway. These have been a life saver this year as many of the meets seem to have put their free and fly events back to back and those are the only two strokes I seriously swim in meets.
One thing I've been discussing with people lately is encouraging clubs to put on time trials within their regular workout schedules. The intent is to allow people who would not normally participate in meets due to time constraints to get official times. With luck some of these people might get addicted and start going to meets, and even if not they are getting better value for their membership. An option would be to have a schedule for these time trials and combine the results into a virtual meet sort of like the postal events but purely online. Again, you don't get the head to head racing unless you have someone in your club to race, but you get a chance to swim your events without travel time, without suboptimal event ordering, without endless heats, etc.. Developing the infrastructure for officials for these might also add to the general pool of officials for meets and experience gained might encourage more clubs to hold meets.
