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Event Showcase

Jessica Reilly

Event Showcase - Featuring 6 experienced USMS event hosts! From open water to pool to dryland, this session promises to be a diverse and dynamic showcase of the best USMS events across the country.

    • Speakers: Doug Garcia, Bonnie Adams, Celia Wolff, Rick Osterberg, Teddy Palmer, Peter Guadagni

    • Some of the information I shared in my section of this presentation:

      Rick Osterberg - Meet Director for NE LMSC SCY Champs at Harvard from 2000-2019, and hopefully again in 2024. This meet is typically 750-850 swimmers, with a max of 1064 swimmers back in 2010. Meet format is typically 4 days over 2 weekends:

      Weekend 1: Saturday Distance Day (1000 and 1650 freestyle, all day long)
      Wekeend 2: Friday/Saturday/Sunday: All day, all other events including all 5 standard relay events.

      Five keys to the meet that I shared:

      1. Know your audiences
          - Repeat swimmers who know what to do, but want to know what has changed.
          - Returning college swimmers who are comfortable on the pool deck, but need to learn some of the USMS nuances.
          - Folks returning to the water after 5 or 30 years, who may need help with whistle starts, fly-over starts, check-in, etc.

      2. Predictable, not boring
          - Our overall structure is the the same every year, but we change the order of events every year. We have never done the same order of events more than once.
          - Pre-entries timeline: We post a guesstimate timeline before entries, so folks know that the 50 free is likely 3-4pm, and not at 10am.
          - Post-entries timeline: We post a detailed timeline, and generally stay very close to it (usually within 5-10 minutes). The timeline is updated online throughout the session.

      3. Communicate the right information at the right time
          - What do participants need to know via email before they enter? 1 month before? 1 week before? 1 day before?
          - Signage at the meet: Clear, concise, and consistent.
          - PA announcer: Also predictable but not boring. Reminders about times and deadlines. Warmup ends in 10 minutes. Sprint lanes open in 20 minutes. 200 fly closes in 15 minutes.

      4. Leverage technology, but be careful
          - At Harvard's Blodgett Pool, we have a beautiful big scoreboard that we can get lots of information onto. (It's a Daktronics board, 1296x720 resolution.) We can put the lane assignments for the -next- heat on the scoreboard. We put the timeline and other dynamic messaging about deadlines so everyone can see. ("M 200 fly closes at 2:36pm")
          - We do not use online check-in. If there are problems (such as your phone isn't working right), there is no backup plan since the swimmer is probably not at the pool yet. We do on-deck positive check-in on paper. Each event closes 60 minutes before it swims, and heat sheets post about 45 minutes before the event starts. Over 4000 splashes, we end up with 35-40 no-show empty lanes, which makes for full heats and good competition.

      5. Have fun!
          - Seed time prize: If you swim your exact seed time (to the 0.01), you get a $10 Starbucks card.
          - We do a seed time analysis so folks can see who the "best" and who the "worst" seeders were for the meet. (Calculated in swim time/seed time differential per 100 yards swum.) There is lots of chatter from people trying to avoid the "worst seeders" list.

      Check out our 2019 event page, including seed time analysis on the results page:

      http://www.meetresults.com/2019/nelmscscy/

      http://www.meetresults.com/2019/nelmscscy/results.shtml