With the continued growth in USMS membership, I would submit that it's time to eliminate the regional teams at Nationals. Case in point: NCMS sent a "team" of 123 swimmers to Atlanta, enough to enter A, B, C, and D relays in many events (e.g. the mens 35+ 200 free relay in which our club team placed 13th behind eight regional teams). It's been argued that the formation of regional teams allows more swimmers to participate in relays, yet local clubs from North Carolina sent as many as thirty or more athletes and could have entered relays on their own as our club (with eight swimmers) did. Swim with the guys you actually train with.
Former Member
I have to agree that swimmers should complain if this happens ...
Or sign-up anyway for the meet under their club,zone/region. It's not like the coaches can actually stop them for signing-up or attending the meet. After all, this is the swimmer's nationals.
just to deviate slightly from the topic on hand, I think it would be cool to compete for your state. so nationals would be 50 teams + PR. I would also think its important that people swimming for their state are actually residents of that state.
I say that because I think Worlds would be more interesting if it was a meet for nation against nation not team against team. There must be 100's if not a 1000 teams being respresented at worlds. Of the nearly 7000 coming to sweden, only 7 are from my team, but at last check there was over 600 from sweden.
Let the world records for relays be set by the 4 best swimmers from a country and not just the teams that can recruit. and that swimmers are not just members of the federation, but citizens of that country as well.
I'm lucky, I'm a dual citizen so I could pick and choose between sweden and the US (or Texas nationally)
HAVING SAID THAT, who really cares about masters zone, association or national team championships? In whatever manner they are constructed, they are just collections of "whoever could make it to the meet". I'm sure in Atlanta, Walnut Creek didn't have all of their best swimmers there. Nor TOC, nor even OREG.
Sure there are teams that train together, and their swimmers probably have stronger bonds than do swimmers from regional teams.
I, for one, would gladly pimp myself out to swim on a great WR or NR relay team. Who cares if I have to wear a different cap? Ultimately, I will still be looking at my individual events first. And I will still watch the swims of old and new friends, regardless of who they represent.
If this is such an issue, why not simply exclude the relay points from the total scoring? And then let any group of four swimmers get together for relays... regardless of where they train, or who they represented in individual events.
I'm going to agree with Jim on these points.
I don't really care about scoring at Nationals much. I confess I have no idea who won and didn't listen to the announcement at the end of the meet. I do feel slightly put off by the fact that my little local relays got whomped by the regional teams. But I don't have much desire to swim on a big regional relay team with people I don't know. I enjoy relays. But I like swimming them with either people on my small local team or people I know and like (old friends or new, near or far). If I had to hold out for people I actually "train regularly" with, I would never swim relays since I train mostly solo.
With the continued growth in USMS membership, I would submit that it's time to eliminate the regional teams at Nationals. Case in point: NCMS sent a "team" of 123 swimmers to Atlanta, enough to enter A, B, C, and D relays in many events (e.g. the mens 35+ 200 free relay in which our club team placed 13th behind eight regional teams). It's been argued that the formation of regional teams allows more swimmers to participate in relays, yet local clubs from North Carolina sent as many as thirty or more athletes and could have entered relays on their own as our club (with eight swimmers) did. Swim with the guys you actually train with.
Question, when you were living in north carolina, swimming for NCMS I would guess, did you complain about regional teams then? Or is this something new since you moved to texas?
I don't know how my regional team did score-wise. Was the meet even scored this year? I don't know. Come over to the dark side, we have cookies :D
Our regional team beat your regional team, avenging our narrow loss to your regional team last year at Clovis. Send 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 had no idea this practice was going on.....
makes me want to stick to OW
Rich, besides Kleenex, the waist-mounted dispenser would need to have some sort of bottle with a hypoallergenic emollient. But I like the way you are thinking here! (Lord, I hope Ahelee isn't reading this thread. How soon before you and I join the List of Malefactors banned for life for inappropriate jocularity, or, as it is also sometimes called, word rape?)
Oh sheez... fine Jim - ruin my reputation on the forum!
Now I'll never have a crack at a spot on the Snotty Forum Poster relay :(
