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.:)
It appears that +/- 20% is too great an error range for you. What is acceptable?
A 20% error for seeding it horrendous.
At our most recent NE LMSC SCY Champs, out of 850 swimmers in the meet, our 600th "best" seeder in the meet had an error rate of 6%, which for that person was around 7 seconds per 100 yards. (We had 50 swimmers who averaged 1.1% error or less, which was generally less than 1 second per 100 yards error.) We had one swimmer swim 11 events, and the average seed error over all 11 events was 0.48 seconds per 100 yards, or 0.61%.
We only had 40 swimmers whose error was over 10%, and only 3 who were over 20%.
My seeding error grading:
It appears that +/- 20% is too great an error range for you. What is acceptable?
A 20% error for seeding it horrendous.
At our most recent NE LMSC SCY Champs, out of 850 swimmers in the meet, our 600th "best" seeder in the meet had an error rate of 6%, which for that person was around 7 seconds per 100 yards. (We had 50 swimmers who averaged 1.1% error or less, which was generally less than 1 second per 100 yards error.) We had one swimmer swim 11 events, and the average seed error over all 11 events was 0.48 seconds per 100 yards, or 0.61%.
We only had 40 swimmers whose error was over 10%, and only 3 who were over 20%.
My seeding error grading:
