No sandbagging: It's the law

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

if you simply entered with your anticipated times (like the rulebook states...) Where does the rule book provide guidelines for entry times? I think I have implied several times that there are no official guidelines for submitting seed times and if there is, I am really surprised no one called me on this.

sometimes a meet schedule and life schedule conspire so that sandbagging is a viable and respectable option Well, "respectable" is maybe not the word that would spring to my mind while watching a comparable babe-in-the-woods lapping 80-year-olds multiple times at nationals.

OK, after reading this thread, I am now not only paranoid; I'm obsessed (to the point of sending out a couple of PM's on the subject). :confused: How do I know what seed times to put down for Auburn (and whether I really qualify for a 4th event*), when physical issues make predicting my times nearly impossible? Not only is two months out a total guess; so is week-to-week and day-to-day! My body's hypersensitivity to heat (still undiagnosed) and cold (Raynaud's) make for very unpredictable performance predictions; especially since my reaction to heat often causes sleep problems. Except for Mesa, I never know what the pool/air conditions will be like for a meet. Will the air be very hot and humid? If I am stuck doing warm-ups or warm-downs in the kiddie pool or dive tank where the water is often above 85 degrees, will my body have a meltdown? My performance can even change drastically from day to day in the same meet, depending on the night I had in between, as a reaction to heat exposure. I scratched the 200 breaststroke on Sunday, at Mesa, because I knew if I attempted it, I would have been the first (and only) rescue! :afraid: *I qualified in the 50yd breaststroke, last September, so technically I can convert that time and qualify for Auburn. But, I have been anywhere from 2-3+ seconds off since! :badday: Thanks, in advance, for any polite feedback any of you can offer. Hopefully, by posting on this thread, your responses will provide guidance to other swimmers who may be feeling like they are in the same boat (uhhhh, POOL.). Hey Elaine, I'm probably in the same situation you are w/o the health issues. I've never raced long course before so I have absolutely no idea how to accurately seed my times. I'm just going to convert my Feb. Auburn times and hope it is close. Do your best to be accurate... that is all they ask for. Yes, you and I both may waste some meet time because we aren't experienced swimmers and our seeds are variable. They know that and they know we aren't intentionally sandbagging. As for the conditions, I can throw around some rumors and guesses (probably as accurate as my seed times). Maybe someone with better connections can confirm/deny. There's an outside 50m pool that will probably be set up for long course warm ups. I recall it being next to the aquatic center but still a decent walk away from the main pool. Plan on the outdoor pool being hot and muggy. No different than what you deal with in Georgia in the summer. If you are hypersensitive to heat, I wouldn't warm up there. I think the main pool is 65m long. There will probably be warm up lanes in the diving well which should be 79 to 80 degrees. If these exist, they will be 25 yards... just like in feb. They will probably also open up the other indoor pool which I believe is also kept at a cool temperature. Everything in the aquatic center should be air conditioned and kept at a comfy temp. I can verify some of this (pool temps/ Aquatic center temps) tomorrow morning if you want.

I can verify some of this (pool temps/ Aquatic center temps) tomorrow morning if you want. Thanks for your advice, Peter! I saw the outdoor pool when we were at Auburn, and, I have no intention of swimming in at, as nice as it looked! I hope you are right about the dive well, at Auburn, because it was very warm at Athens, as was the other indoor pool for the students. Verifying these temps. would not only help me; it would help out others like Swimcat who I know has similar issues. Of course, we can just wait until we arrive to find out, but that extra peace of mind would do wonders! :D

It is unwise to ever try to intervene in a knife fight, but here I go anyway. Why couldn't meets just use a database to discover a swimmer's best time over a previous period, say a year, and seed accordingly? More competitive heats and less waiting around: sounds good to me. My knifefight intervention wouldn't be complete without weighing in on the profound moral issues sandbagging raises for society, posterity, and our sacred honor. A zen koan shall serve. The other day on my way out of the swim complex I hung around to watch an h.s. water polo practice. The coach was earnestly teaching the team how to fake a suit snag, or other underwater foul, to sucker the refs. Pretty good acting jobs, gotta say, with groans, armflops, blah blah. Now as we know from watching the NBA, faking a foul isn't against the rules. But is it the way we wish to live? To teach h.s. kids to dupe the ref, sending your opponent to the alley while you score a goal? Sorry for the redirect/hijacking. Please resume the highly enjoyable knifefight. Woofus, may I offer an (almost) appropriate Smilie to emphasize your point (no pun intended): :duel: And, you forgot this one: :hijack: (How did I do, That Guy ?) See, your comments in bold: :applaud: On that note, I have sufficiently stuck my neck out (something I was avoiding up to this point): :bolt:

And, you forgot this one: :hijack: (How did I do, That Guy ?) OBI WAN HAS TAUGHT YOU WELL BUT YOU ARE NOT A JEDI YET *cough* *cough* ... where did that come from? Lightning shooting out of my hands and everything. Hopefully this is just a 24 hour virus and not a full-on dark side thing. :dunno: Anyway, when you register for meets through clubassistant.com, it suggests a time for you to enter with if it has one on file for you. It's easier to just click on the suggested time than it is to type one in, so I generally just click the link. :applaud:

My average % difference turned out to be 1.03%, which yields an A+. :applaud: I'm not sure if I actually deserve an A- but I'll reluctantly accept it from Professor Osterber just this once :angel: Congratulations, That Guy; you are a true :angel:. :cheerleader: Now, can I hire you as my seeding consultant ( :2cents: ), so I don't keep reverse sandbagging? Sheeesh, I made NQT last September in my 50 breaststroke and I haven't been able to get close since! :bitching:

It's true, I do try to live in a world of sweet perfection... Where we all look out for each other. Especially within our sport of swimming. Take the action that boosts the spirit of our athletes. Talk to each other. Build the spirit of an athlete. Don't break it. They come to masters swimming for a million reasons. Find ANY SINGLE WAY to keep them swimming. LOVE from Northern CAL. :applaud: :angel: Well said, Ahelee! Thank you. I hope all of our fellow Forumites will take this to heart on the forums, as well as at the pool! :cheerleader:

How do I know what seed times to put down for Auburn (and whether I really qualify for a 4th event*), when physical issues make predicting my times nearly impossible? *I qualified in the 50yd breaststroke, last September, so technically I can convert that time and qualify for Auburn. But, I have been anywhere from 2-3+ seconds off since! :badday: Thanks, in advance, for any polite feedback any of you can offer. Hopefully, by posting on this thread, your responses will provide guidance to other swimmers who may be feeling like they are in the same boat (uhhhh, POOL.). I *think* I read somewhere that your QTs must have been done in the last 2 years, and they were, so you should feel able/entitled to enter a 4th event if you so wish. Although I'm not going to Auburn this year, I'm hoping to make enough NQTs to pick any 6 events if I do get to nationals next year. Right now my 100 free is just so close that if I desperately wanted to enter it along with 3 other events without NQTs, I would enter the NQT as my seed time.:afraid: Who said that? It wasn't me:bolt: