Regional Teams: What's the Point?

Hey That Guy, I can deliver cookies as I will be at T-Hills next weekend. Sadly, Bill elected not to compete, figuring he would be burned out after nats... But I see Bill most early AM's M-F, so if you want to send him anything, I can act as a courier. Bill and MJ, I appreciate your efforts to turn this into a gridge. I really do. We need more gridges around here. And trying to extort cookies from me in the process, well, that was a stroke of genius. But as you learned in my earlier post, I JUST DON'T CARE about Nationals scoring. And on top of that, I already ate the cookies :angel:

I very respectfully call BS on this. Ahelee, I know you don't mean to put the onus completely on the swimmer for allowing coaches (or other swimmers?) to engage in that sort of behavior. But I think of swimmers who are excited to get 1-2 QTs and feel like they've earned a "right" to go to nationals. And then to be told by the coach that they essentially don't belong with the group with which they practice? That's absolutely disgraceful behavior. I actually like the small/medium/large idea, but in my mind this sort of behavior (which I am sure -- maybe wishful thinking? -- would be quite rare) is enough to use some other system. We went to a straight-up, no categories, system and a number of people from local teams objected to competing (in the team scores) against regional teams. And so here we are. I can't recall ... did we shift to the straight up no categories system because of this behavior or for other reasons? It is indeed utterly disgraceful, but does a super rare occurrence (I hope), justify the current system, making it unfair for small and medium sized local teams? I have to agree that swimmers should complain if this happens ...

I can't recall ... did we shift to the straight up no categories system because of this behavior or for other reasons? It is indeed utterly disgraceful, but does a super rare occurrence (I hope), justify the current system, making it unfair for small and medium sized local teams? I think another reason was the perception that cutoffs between small/medium/large were a little arbitrary.

i don't know of any team/club/lmsc/workout group within USMS that takes team competition that seriously..... maybe i'm wrong.I'm with you chaos. ...And I've arrived at my conclusion. I JUST DON'T CARE. I don't know which team won at Atlanta. I don't know how my regional team did score-wise. Was the meet even scored this year? I don't know. There were many amazing swims, that's what's interesting to me. When someone gets really worked up about Nationals scoring (which in fairness, doesn't seem to be the case in this thread), even if I don't respond, rest assured that I'm laughing. Come over to the dark side, we have cookies :DI'll bring the wine (or milk or non-harmful protein drink) to go with the cookies. Sadly, when we had Small, Medium and Large categories there were isolated incidents of teams asking their slower swimmers to stay home. Similarly, some asked for their slower swimmers to switch to Unattached status for the meet so they wouldn't count against the number of swimmers (in case it helped them stay in a smaller category for scoring).I will never ever worry about me taking this sport too seriously as long as there are people out there like that. :D

Here is something else to consider. Last year at LCM Nats in Indy, there was an entire day spent just on relays. That day was Saturday, right in the middle of the meet. I wanted to go to the meet but figured it wouldn't be worth it to sit around for an entire day doing nothing. In our region, Allegheny Mountain Association Masters, it's virtually impossible to get enough people together to travel to a distant meet and swim a relay. I tried my friends at Team Pitt; I tried my teammates at the Sewickley Y. I managed to cajole precisely one person to go to the meet. We ended up transferring our affiliation to the Capital Illinois Bullet-Headed Saxon Mother's Sons team, or something that sounded more or less like this. That's how much affiliation we had with the team--I can no longer ever remember its name! That said, getting to swim as a Bullet Headed Saxon Mother proved to be incredibly fun and a high point of the meet for me and my fellow traveler, Bill White. However, in order to make this transfer, then transfer back, proved to be a major bureaucratic headache of mailing forms hither and yon, etc. Those of you who have the luxury of fielding humongous hordes of swimmers with every possible permutation of relays, consider yourselves lucky. There are many of us, however, who almost never swim relays because we can't get enough people together to come close to fielding one. What if USMS allowed the possibility of "pick up" relays where team orphans like me could create relays with other orphans once we got to the meet? Surely, this would encourage camaraderie and the formation of new friendships? We could stipulate that such relays don't "count" for team scoring, and maybe not even for Top 10 consideration (though this seems harsh.) We could further stipulate that the only people allowed to form such de facto teams would be those who could not otherwise swim any relays at all. If the latter codicils were adopted, it would perhaps prevent great swimmers from going to meets unattached and cherry picking themselves yet another opportunity for greatness with others of their ilk. (I can already see Michael Ross and Chris Stevenson begging me and Leslie to join them in a mixed gender relay.) Anyhow, what do you think of some variation of this? Kinks remain to be worked out (such as when I would be allowed to swim as woman.) But I am confident that now that I have outlined my Broad Vision for Equal Relay Opportunity, the detail people can work on eliminating said kinks. Who could possibly object to a de-kinked version of this Great Idea? My guess, alas, based on passing acquaintance with some of the "professional" i.e., paid masters coaches in the land of milk and honey (California) is that it will never fly. The reason: anything that could possibly diminish their team's apparent greatness, especially a rag-tag band of self-assembled misfits that do not require coaching ministrations to excel, is the last thing they want to see happen.

I like Jim's idea of "pick-up" relays with one caveat. Any pick up relays could swim for gull's team and then make his team a regional team.

I like Jim's idea of "pick-up" relays with one caveat. Any pick up relays could swim for gull's team and then make his team a regional team. I will gladly swim on a team with Gull. Given my condition, it's never a mistake to keep a cardiologist handy.

... a rag-tag band of self-assembled misfits that do not require coaching ministrations to excel...Jim, what does it take to actually create a Masters team? Does said team actually have to have any workouts together? Maybe you should create RagTagMasters and starting recruiting for teammates from around the country. Like many people, I had only 1 person from my training group come to Atlanta (and we don't really know each other), so we never could've fielded a relay team. I did swim a relay with folks from Arizona Masters, but, nice people though they were, I didn't really know them either as they were from a different part of the state. I do consider myself an Arizonan as I've lived here longer than any other place, so it makes sense for me to swim on that regional team. For you, though, I would be happy to pimp myself out for your team.

Thanks, Bill and Matteo, for your enthusiastic endorsement of my idea! The next former Olympic freestyler who gives the concept a thumb's up is invited to join the three of us in the first national Pick Up Relay under the not yet recognized Thornton codicil to Subsection 1Y-006, subparagraph 3-5, the USMS Handbook of Legal But Dubious Swimming Behavior. I should not that we need to add a special clause in here somewhere that we cannot be banned for life if our attempts at "picking up" relay members are somehow misconstrued as being something they are most decidedly not, whether we are or are not under the influence of Ambien at the time of said recruitment. Motion to pass? Aye. Second? Aye. Codicil adopted for further consideration by the competition and cheating committee.

For you, though, I would be happy to pimp myself out for your team. Done! It's Patrick, Mateo, Bill, and myself--the next time the four of us are assembled at a meet, we will deck enter a relay! The only question that remains is what category we should swim it as: men's or mixed? I say we should go for mixed because that would allow me and one of you guys to wear a women's body suit. In for a penny, in for a pound, I say!