USMS National Sign up date

By saying "In today's world" I assume you are referring to technology advances for seeding, entry processing, etc. However, those advances have very little to do with why we require 35 days notice. Our Nationals hosts' prepare for their meet for up to 2 years in advance and they have no idea how many swimmers are coming until the entry deadline. Annual meets in the same geographic area (such as a Pac Champ meet) have somewhat predictable attendance each year, but Nationals is anybody's guess (and it is usually wrong). At one point Clovis was preparing for 3000 swimmers (they ended up with 1582). The number of volunteers needed to run the meet relies heavily on the meet timeline - which is wholly contingent upon the number of swimmers (are the days long enough for two shifts or are three needed?). Much has to happen between the entry deadline and the meet at Nationals that doesn't typically occur for local meets (6th event decisions, seeding variation decisions, publishing a 100+ page program with content to comply with USMS corporate partner agreements, setting up shuttle schedules, etc.). And much of this work is done by volunteers. USA Swimming can pull meets together more quickly because they have a paid staff working full time on the meet. But as of this moment, there are no paid staff on the USMS Championship Committee :D In summary, the Host needs as much time as possible to know how many swimmers are expected to compete. The Championship Committee is aware of the inconvenience of having to enter Nationals prior to many LMSC and Zone Championship meets and is investigating alternatives such as the ability to update your entry times after you've entered, or perhaps the USMS Top Times database will automatically update your seed time if new results get uploaded. This won't happen in time for Mesa or Auburn but I can say it is being looked into - we just talked about it last week on a conference call: www.usms.org/.../champ-2011-2-16-1.pdf Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Jeff Roddin USMS Championship Committee Chair championship@usms.org EXCELLENT POST! You get the Post of the Month award! It is often overlooked and total unappreciated all the work that goes into putting on events/meets! And i'd like to give a shout out to my faaaavorite official, chowsh, who will most likely be officiating at nationals!!!!

By saying "In today's world" I assume you are referring to technology advances for seeding, entry processing, etc. However, those advances have very little to do with why we require 35 days notice. Our Nationals hosts' prepare for their meet for up to 2 years in advance and they have no idea how many swimmers are coming until the entry deadline. Annual meets in the same geographic area (such as a Pac Champ meet) have somewhat predictable attendance each year, but Nationals is anybody's guess (and it is usually wrong). At one point Clovis was preparing for 3000 swimmers (they ended up with 1582). The number of volunteers needed to run the meet relies heavily on the meet timeline - which is wholly contingent upon the number of swimmers (are the days long enough for two shifts or are three needed?). Much has to happen between the entry deadline and the meet at Nationals that doesn't typically occur for local meets (6th event decisions, seeding variation decisions, publishing a 100+ page program with content to comply with USMS corporate partner agreements, setting up shuttle schedules, etc.). And much of this work is done by volunteers. USA Swimming can pull meets together more quickly because they have a paid staff working full time on the meet. But as of this moment, there are no paid staff on the USMS Championship Committee :D In summary, the Host needs as much time as possible to know how many swimmers are expected to compete. The Championship Committee is aware of the inconvenience of having to enter Nationals prior to many LMSC and Zone Championship meets and is investigating alternatives such as the ability to update your entry times after you've entered, or perhaps the USMS Top Times database will automatically update your seed time if new results get uploaded. This won't happen in time for Mesa or Auburn but I can say it is being looked into - we just talked about it last week on a conference call: www.usms.org/.../champ-2011-2-16-1.pdf Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Jeff Roddin USMS Championship Committee Chair championship@usms.org EXCELLENT POST! You get the Post of the Month award! It is often overlooked and total unappreciated all the work that goes into putting on events/meets! And i'd like to give a shout out to my faaaavorite official, chowsh, who will most likely be officiating at nationals!!!!