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.
Don't mean to be argumentative but I doubt many meets are lucrative. How many swimmers were in this meet? 200? Entry fees $40 or so? That means $8,000. Their costs that day include all the staff for the weekend including lifeguards, the meet director, the electricity, the chemicals, the repayment of bonds to pay for the pool, etc.
If swim meets were lucrative they'd have them all the time. One of the reasons there are so few indoor 50M pools is that they cost ~$10M or more to build one that can host meets. They almost never get built with private funds because there is no return on the investment. That's why they are usually attached to universities or school districts and funded by bond money.
I know this is a tangent discussion. Sorry.
No problem. There were 473 swimmers. If you swam a lot of events, fees were over $50. Staff (lifeguards, etc.) were already there. They would be there whether there was a meet or open swim or USS swimming. The meet director is a member of GMU. The timers were all GMU students and the officials and meet people volunteered. People running the meet were mosting GMU swimmer folk. They seemed to think they did pretty well on the meet.
Lindsay's suggestion is a good one, but I can see it could get confusing. Personally, I'd rather have more rest than ensure I was in a heat with all comparable swimmers. I tend to swim against myself anyway.
Don't mean to be argumentative but I doubt many meets are lucrative. How many swimmers were in this meet? 200? Entry fees $40 or so? That means $8,000. Their costs that day include all the staff for the weekend including lifeguards, the meet director, the electricity, the chemicals, the repayment of bonds to pay for the pool, etc.
If swim meets were lucrative they'd have them all the time. One of the reasons there are so few indoor 50M pools is that they cost ~$10M or more to build one that can host meets. They almost never get built with private funds because there is no return on the investment. That's why they are usually attached to universities or school districts and funded by bond money.
I know this is a tangent discussion. Sorry.
No problem. There were 473 swimmers. If you swam a lot of events, fees were over $50. Staff (lifeguards, etc.) were already there. They would be there whether there was a meet or open swim or USS swimming. The meet director is a member of GMU. The timers were all GMU students and the officials and meet people volunteered. People running the meet were mosting GMU swimmer folk. They seemed to think they did pretty well on the meet.
Lindsay's suggestion is a good one, but I can see it could get confusing. Personally, I'd rather have more rest than ensure I was in a heat with all comparable swimmers. I tend to swim against myself anyway.
