The anti-sandbag law:
"if a swimmer enters an event with a time significantly slower or faster than that swimmer's recorded time in the past two years, the meet director may, after a discussion with the swimmer, change the seeded time to a realistic time" (104.5.5.A(10)).
Concerning my Auburn nationals entry, I confess, when faced with a 7 hour 2 stop flight and 3:45 nonstop at an earlier time, I did what any warm-blooded middle-aged American swimmer with low self-esteem would do--sandbag my entry so I could catch the earlier flight, thus diminishing the possible time spent sitting next to a 400 pound Alabama slammer with sleep apnea wearing nothing but overalls and body odor. Of course, I was caught in my bold fabrication and my time was "fixed."
USMS seems to have an identity problem. Are we hard core with rigid qualifying times? It would seem not as 2 of my not-so-speedy family members were allowed to swim four events last year in Puerto Rico. If we are not hard core, why does anybody care that I sandbag? More to the point, why can one person enter a crappy time and another cannot? Just wondering.:)
Wow... I'm really sorry that I missed most of this thread. Day job has been a bear, and has kept me away from the forums for a bit.
Sandbagging is a particular pet peeve of mine. As has been pointed out, I wrote the "Against Sandbagging" part of the Both Sides of the Lane Line piece last spring. USMS couldn't find anyone to go on record "for" sandbagging. Interesting.
I run the New England SCY Champs each March at Harvard. We have 800-1000 swimmers, and as many as 6000+ individual swims.
As I wrote in Both Sides of the Lane Line...
Sandbagging makes the meet run longer. At our meet, we usually have 200+ heats per day. If we waste 10 seconds per heat on average due to sandbagging, that's over 30 minutes wasted. That's 2 hours over the course of the meet. That's 30 less minutes of sleep you get before coming back the next day. 20 seconds per heat? An hour a day, down the drain. We have to block people from the meet because it fills up. As seed times have improved year-over-year, we have been able to increase the size of the meet, and get more of your friends swimming.
Many people incorrectly think that if they sandbag, they're not wasting any time, since they're finishing first in their heat. But it's not true. If you drop to the first heat, then in every other heat, the fastest person in each heat is bumped into the next heat, as the slowest person. So each successive heat get just a little bit slower. If that differential is 10 seconds, and the event has 30 heats, that's 5 minutes lost to the whole meet. Just because you decided to sandbag.
Why are you going to a championship meet, be it my meet, or Nationals? I know a lot of it is socializing. But some of it is competitive swimming, right? You may not care about racing the people around you. However, your friends have paid good money, and gotten a hotel room, and sat around on the pool deck all day, to swim against you. If you're only interested in socializing, then please enter just the 50 free, and then spend the rest of the week-end socializing on deck. Fine with me.
If you want to sandbag, and swim in the first heat of the 500 free so you can get to the airport.... then please do me a favor -- go home early, and have your coach get out a stopwatch and time you for a 500 free. If you're not interested in swimming against anyone, then please don't take up space in my pool. You can get the same result just swimming at home. I've got hundreds of other people who are interested in racing, and have paid money to do so.
If everyone were that selfish, the whole purpose of time seeding goes out the window. Why even seed? Yes, sandbagging is selfish. You're putting your own agenda ahead of everyone else at the meet.
There are a number of people who clearly get a rush out of blowing their heat away and winning by multiple bodylengths. It is clear from fist-pumping and chest-thumping and other body language. They're not doing best times (we checked). They're just somehow happy that they've beaten everyone else in their heat by 10 seconds. If this is you, please talk to a therapist about your power tripping problems. Just because you beat everyone in heat 10 out of 35, you still got 25th in your age group out of 27. And, while you were chest-thumping, the person swimming next to you was seeded properly, and did a personal best time! But they feel embarrassed because they were blown out of the water by your insecurity.
I am not expecting seeding perfection. I know we're adults, and life happens. I know you were sent out of town on business the week before the meet, and there was no pool, so you've been out of the water a few days. I get it. I just want you to think about it. I want you to make an effort to enter with a time that you expect to swim. If you make the effort, but goof -- that's fine. You'll do better next time.
At our NE LMSC SCY champs, we do a number of things to discourage sandbagging. We offer a seed time prize. If you swim your seed time to the exact 0.01 second, you win a $10 Starbucks card. When you enter online, we automatically suggest seed times based on data in the USMS times database. (Yes, there's a times database!) That alone has helped a ton with seed times. We've been able to allow more swimmers into the meet. More of your friends to socialize with!
After each meet, we publish a full analysis of the best seeders, and the worst seeders. Each year, I go through "last year's" worst seeders, and review their seed times for this year's meets.
We have had a policy at this meet for many years that the meet director has discretion to correct any seed times that are "obviously" incorrect. We've been correcting seed times for years, with very very little issue. It has become standard enough that we regularly get emails along with entries from people with a heads-up about seed time reasons.... such as pregnancy, shoulder surgery, etc. All fine with me!
Sandbagging is selfish. When you go to a meet, there's an expectation that you are there to race other people. When you sandbag, you take that away from others, for your own selfish reasons. Don't do it.
-Rick
Wow... I'm really sorry that I missed most of this thread. Day job has been a bear, and has kept me away from the forums for a bit.
Sandbagging is a particular pet peeve of mine. As has been pointed out, I wrote the "Against Sandbagging" part of the Both Sides of the Lane Line piece last spring. USMS couldn't find anyone to go on record "for" sandbagging. Interesting.
I run the New England SCY Champs each March at Harvard. We have 800-1000 swimmers, and as many as 6000+ individual swims.
As I wrote in Both Sides of the Lane Line...
Sandbagging makes the meet run longer. At our meet, we usually have 200+ heats per day. If we waste 10 seconds per heat on average due to sandbagging, that's over 30 minutes wasted. That's 2 hours over the course of the meet. That's 30 less minutes of sleep you get before coming back the next day. 20 seconds per heat? An hour a day, down the drain. We have to block people from the meet because it fills up. As seed times have improved year-over-year, we have been able to increase the size of the meet, and get more of your friends swimming.
Many people incorrectly think that if they sandbag, they're not wasting any time, since they're finishing first in their heat. But it's not true. If you drop to the first heat, then in every other heat, the fastest person in each heat is bumped into the next heat, as the slowest person. So each successive heat get just a little bit slower. If that differential is 10 seconds, and the event has 30 heats, that's 5 minutes lost to the whole meet. Just because you decided to sandbag.
Why are you going to a championship meet, be it my meet, or Nationals? I know a lot of it is socializing. But some of it is competitive swimming, right? You may not care about racing the people around you. However, your friends have paid good money, and gotten a hotel room, and sat around on the pool deck all day, to swim against you. If you're only interested in socializing, then please enter just the 50 free, and then spend the rest of the week-end socializing on deck. Fine with me.
If you want to sandbag, and swim in the first heat of the 500 free so you can get to the airport.... then please do me a favor -- go home early, and have your coach get out a stopwatch and time you for a 500 free. If you're not interested in swimming against anyone, then please don't take up space in my pool. You can get the same result just swimming at home. I've got hundreds of other people who are interested in racing, and have paid money to do so.
If everyone were that selfish, the whole purpose of time seeding goes out the window. Why even seed? Yes, sandbagging is selfish. You're putting your own agenda ahead of everyone else at the meet.
There are a number of people who clearly get a rush out of blowing their heat away and winning by multiple bodylengths. It is clear from fist-pumping and chest-thumping and other body language. They're not doing best times (we checked). They're just somehow happy that they've beaten everyone else in their heat by 10 seconds. If this is you, please talk to a therapist about your power tripping problems. Just because you beat everyone in heat 10 out of 35, you still got 25th in your age group out of 27. And, while you were chest-thumping, the person swimming next to you was seeded properly, and did a personal best time! But they feel embarrassed because they were blown out of the water by your insecurity.
I am not expecting seeding perfection. I know we're adults, and life happens. I know you were sent out of town on business the week before the meet, and there was no pool, so you've been out of the water a few days. I get it. I just want you to think about it. I want you to make an effort to enter with a time that you expect to swim. If you make the effort, but goof -- that's fine. You'll do better next time.
At our NE LMSC SCY champs, we do a number of things to discourage sandbagging. We offer a seed time prize. If you swim your seed time to the exact 0.01 second, you win a $10 Starbucks card. When you enter online, we automatically suggest seed times based on data in the USMS times database. (Yes, there's a times database!) That alone has helped a ton with seed times. We've been able to allow more swimmers into the meet. More of your friends to socialize with!
After each meet, we publish a full analysis of the best seeders, and the worst seeders. Each year, I go through "last year's" worst seeders, and review their seed times for this year's meets.
We have had a policy at this meet for many years that the meet director has discretion to correct any seed times that are "obviously" incorrect. We've been correcting seed times for years, with very very little issue. It has become standard enough that we regularly get emails along with entries from people with a heads-up about seed time reasons.... such as pregnancy, shoulder surgery, etc. All fine with me!
Sandbagging is selfish. When you go to a meet, there's an expectation that you are there to race other people. When you sandbag, you take that away from others, for your own selfish reasons. Don't do it.
-Rick
