6th event at SC Nats?

To make the economics work, you really do need to have a significant base charge. There are certain fixed costs associated with having a person come to the meet for "zero" events. It doesn't cost 6 times as much to swim 6 events as it does to swim 1. But it's significantly expensive to swim 1 event. I.e., the way it's setup makes a lot of sense for the real economics. Also, truth is, getting meet participants to work the meet can be very very difficult. It's usually easier to have people who are not participating in the meet be involved with staffing. That way they are single-task-oriented. I don't know what they're doing in Atlanta, but what often works well is to "sub-contract" things like timing to a club team, for example. I.e., we need 24 timers, or 30 timers, or whatever... such-and-such club team is organized to provide those people. That way, when they show up, they all know each other, and they have an ability within their own ranks to fill in for missing people. Also, if you have a leader within that group, i.e., someone who could be the head timer, everyone in that group already knows that person, and that person already knows everyone in their group. It makes it much easier to manage those mini-armies of people. If you have 30 "random" people signed up to time, it can be a disaster. Make no mistake... organizing the small army required to pull of something like a national championship is no small task. A national championship meet could easily involve 300+ workers of one kind or another. -Rick

To make the economics work, you really do need to have a significant base charge. There are certain fixed costs associated with having a person come to the meet for "zero" events. It doesn't cost 6 times as much to swim 6 events as it does to swim 1. But it's significantly expensive to swim 1 event. I.e., the way it's setup makes a lot of sense for the real economics. Also, truth is, getting meet participants to work the meet can be very very difficult. It's usually easier to have people who are not participating in the meet be involved with staffing. That way they are single-task-oriented. I don't know what they're doing in Atlanta, but what often works well is to "sub-contract" things like timing to a club team, for example. I.e., we need 24 timers, or 30 timers, or whatever... such-and-such club team is organized to provide those people. That way, when they show up, they all know each other, and they have an ability within their own ranks to fill in for missing people. Also, if you have a leader within that group, i.e., someone who could be the head timer, everyone in that group already knows that person, and that person already knows everyone in their group. It makes it much easier to manage those mini-armies of people. If you have 30 "random" people signed up to time, it can be a disaster. Make no mistake... organizing the small army required to pull of something like a national championship is no small task. A national championship meet could easily involve 300+ workers of one kind or another. -Rick