USMS Virtual National Champion

Heck...I'll even settle for a one on one USA vs. Italy! In 1973 at Santa Clara, my club (Pasasa) beat the Italian national team in the 400 meter medley relay. I was stoked. Didn't hurt to have 2 Olympians and one Olympic trials swimmer go before me, either.

Thanks Michael - this is my fault. I confuse these. Probably in my "rage" of disliking these built up teams. They do not train together but gather up at championship time to demolish the clubs who do work together as a unit! Ah well, no one else seems to mind. :) I'm with you, Ahelee! I've said so many times on this forum. I do think the non-ringer "exception" Paul posits above makes sense though. I will be rather lonely on relay day if my teammates don't go to Indy and I do ... Since we're a small team, this could happen.

I'm with you, Ahelee! I've said so many times on this forum. I do think the non-ringer "exception" Paul posits above makes sense though. I will be rather lonely on relay day if my teammates don't go to Indy and I do ... Since we're a small team, this could happen. With all due respect...(I'll quote John Smith here)...this is "masters swimming". I say this knowing some here take this very seriously and that is wonderful...but the reality is we're adults, with careers, families, etc. and as competitive as this stuff can get it's ultimately (IMHO) about friendships. The day things get to serious to the point that people try and legislate the fun out of things is the day I'll be playing masters water polo full time...granted that would probably make a lot of folks from USMS happy!

How about when some former college swimmers reunite? What if you find no one is going from your "club" and want to be on relays and have friends to hang out with so you register with a team of buddies that are going? I know these are not exactly cases of "ringers" but it does show cases where it makes sense. And for the record I personally have never heard of a "clubs" coach organizing/recruiting ringers... I think it is usually a person making a call to a friend or two saying come play with us next meet. This is exactly what happened to some of my girlfriends from SoCal going to The World's in Perth. So they affiliated with NOVA and we all swam on relays together. Pretty sure I wrote that in the message... As for coaches pulling in ringers? COME ON - GET REAL! Or maybe you haven't paid much attention :) As a coach, I'm pretty aware of who is attached to what team and who is unattached or looking. Anyone is mistaken if they think that USMS is not full of coaches who are competitive and LOVE to win. Its' not just the swimmers. As an assistant coach, I take alot of pride in winning our championships with our own club's "cruisers" as well as the few fast swimmers who are willing to come out to meets. We have lost many many championships or not even scored in the top few teams by sending a few fast swimmers. I don't have any power to recruit outside. But when our "cruisers" show up - we are a force at least here in SoCal. I'm just not that into ringers.

Look at Connecticut go! That's pretty good for a 4 or 5 person team!

With all due respect...(I'll quote John Smith here)...this is "masters swimming". I say this knowing some here take this very seriously and that is wonderful...but the reality is we're adults, with careers, families, etc. and as competitive as this stuff can get it's ultimately (IMHO) about friendships. The day things get to serious to the point that people try and legislate the fun out of things is the day I'll be playing masters water polo full time...granted that would probably make a lot of folks from USMS happy! Settle down there, boy! I gave you the friendship, non-ringer exception above. Did you read? I'm not losing any sleep over this. I'm just not thrilled with the ringer concept either.

How about a proportional virtual championship? Score the LMSC (as before) and divide by the reported membership. Gives smaller LMSCs a chance to get some credit. And the same could be done with clubs. ------- secondly, Kudos to Chris S and his heroic excel efforts (must have been a ton of countif statements) - BUT - how hard would it be for the National Office and Top Ten/competition group to do this work? They have the data! And furthermore - it's clean and ready for other analyses - Pool All Stars for example - or SCY/LCM/SCM high point, etc. Writing software should not be a huge task. The national office could ask for volunteer software developers (maybe even sponsor a contest) or put it out to bid. Once the program is written, it should not be too hard to maintain (esp. with clubs and LMSCs table data apart from the TT data).

I was messing around with the Top Ten data for an LMSC newsletter article and went ahead and scored the swims for SCY09 and LCM09 (of course, 2009 SCM isn't out yet). I have attached the scores by club and LMSC (only top 20 for both) and by zone. Although SCY and LCM obviously have "real" national championships, travel/time constraints will tend to favor local teams, compared to a "mythical" championship. Make of these what you will. Details: only individual TT swims are included (ie, relays are not included). All 10 places are scored; points awarded are 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. 2009 SCY Champions Club: WCM LMSC: Pacific Zone: Oceana 2009 LCM Champions Club: ARIZ LMSC: Pacific Zone: Dixie Updated: I figured there might be people interested in clubs outside of the top 20, so I added 2 text files with scores for all of the (almost 200) clubs.