Why doesn’t USA Swimming use cut-off dates like every other youth sport?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

This, it’s no more than the top 5 10U in each event that already have made the 11-12 cut times.

Even fewer in some. Just 3 each in 50 Fly and 200 IM. And that is out of well over 1000 10&U boys in PVS.

And in reality it is the same small group of kids hitting the next age group’s cuts in multiple events.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guys, we’re talking about kids swim. While it’s fun to make cut times for certain meets, and a bummer when the cutoffs don’t work in your favor, it’s… kids swim. As others have said, if they’re a true phenomenon, age cut offs don’t really matter anyway. There are plenty of 13 year olds making top 10 times in the 13/14 age group. If your kid was that good, they would too. Relax. By the time they’re in high school and any of this matters (even questionable that it does in high school) the cutoffs matter much less. In the meantime, the benefits your kid gets from swimming include learning to work hard, challenge themselves, and learn to deal with occasionally disappointment - whether that’s due to a bad race or I’ll timed birthday. Those are things you should be embracing rather than whining that the system is unfair for poor Johnny. - mom of two swimmers, one with a good birthday and one without

Eh, not necessarily. At divisionals (NVSL) this past summer, there was ONE 13 year old boy in the top 27 kids for the 50 free, and I know him; he was already 14 by this summer. (Even he didn't make the top 18, BUT the top seeded kid had a summer birthday and was well over 6'. He was 15, swimming against 14 year olds.) Please don't say that summer birthdays don't really matter. They absolutely do. What the age cut offs do for summer is allow summer birthday kids to hold the records, and to beat out other kids who are much younger.) Another example is the boy who broke the 11/12 year old 50 fly record this summer. He was 13, swimming down and that record will be very hard to break. He now will have through the summer of his 15th birthday to swim as a 13/14 year old.

Ok so would you feel better if these kids turned 13 on August 1st or would you still complain because they were on the older side of things? Any way you slice it there will always be a kid who is on the older side of the age group. Does 1-2 months really make a difference? Some kids also hit puberty earlier than others should we be testing hormone levels to keep everything 100% fair?

As a team rep i do not want to be dealing with kids moving around and switching age groups throughout the season. It is hard enough getting the weekly roster squared away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guys, we’re talking about kids swim. While it’s fun to make cut times for certain meets, and a bummer when the cutoffs don’t work in your favor, it’s… kids swim. As others have said, if they’re a true phenomenon, age cut offs don’t really matter anyway. There are plenty of 13 year olds making top 10 times in the 13/14 age group. If your kid was that good, they would too. Relax. By the time they’re in high school and any of this matters (even questionable that it does in high school) the cutoffs matter much less. In the meantime, the benefits your kid gets from swimming include learning to work hard, challenge themselves, and learn to deal with occasionally disappointment - whether that’s due to a bad race or I’ll timed birthday. Those are things you should be embracing rather than whining that the system is unfair for poor Johnny. - mom of two swimmers, one with a good birthday and one without

Eh, not necessarily. At divisionals (NVSL) this past summer, there was ONE 13 year old boy in the top 27 kids for the 50 free, and I know him; he was already 14 by this summer. (Even he didn't make the top 18, BUT the top seeded kid had a summer birthday and was well over 6'. He was 15, swimming against 14 year olds.) Please don't say that summer birthdays don't really matter. They absolutely do. What the age cut offs do for summer is allow summer birthday kids to hold the records, and to beat out other kids who are much younger.) Another example is the boy who broke the 11/12 year old 50 fly record this summer. He was 13, swimming down and that record will be very hard to break. He now will have through the summer of his 15th birthday to swim as a 13/14 year old.

Because they all swim club, where your age is listed in the results.
How do you know how old these kids are?

Not true. You only know their age at a meet.

You lose all credibility when you start singling out specific children online.

For all you know, they have August birthdays unless you personally know them.

DP, there are swim rank sites that tell you the club kids’ age year and month.

and someone went through the effort to look up these kids...DC uber competitive type A parents at their finest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

You do know that JOs is not a meet that every average swimmer is supposed to swim, right? They set the cuts fast to manage the size of the meet. My February bday 9/10 will be working hard next year to make cuts as a just-turned-10-year-old. He’ll probably make it in some and not in others. And that’s ok, because there are other meets at different times of the year where he will dominate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately the only way to make this "more fair" is to have smaller age groups - instead of the current 24 months (9-10, 11-12, 13-14) have 1 year or even 6 month brackets. Because as we all know, you can now have a 11y1d swimmer competing against a 12y364d swimmer in the same event - a 24 month difference. A reconciling would be to have the range be 6 months - 11y1d to 11y181d instead. But 1) there aren't always enough swimmers to flesh out a heat and then you have half empty heats which takes longer and then 2) you'd end giving out 4x as many medals etc. So unfortunately there isn't really a great solution for this that I can envision. Part of the problem is that the season is so long for the swimming (oct-apr or so) that it doesn't track well to have a singular cutoff.

You're right, the real source of the unfairness is the wide brackets and not the cut offs. There's a gigantic difference between a 11y1d and 12y364d kid in terms of physical development and you're going to have issues like that no matter what the cut off date is. I don't think it's really unsolvable though. You could make the brackets smaller and just swim kids together in heats when there aren't enough, but then produce the results by age. They do this in a lot of the mini meets where the 6-8s are in the same heats (and sometimes they even combine boys and girls heats), but then the results are Girls 8, Girls 7, and so on. One year brackets are also somewhat unfair (there's no perfect system), but a lot less so than the two year ones.

You could, but then you're also doubling the number of time standards needed - instead of 8U,9-10, 11-12,13-14,15+ you now need 8U,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17+? (I'll keep the 8Us together, I don't think there needs to be a separate 7U and 8 category. But yes you could easily swim like they do in the minis where they combine heats by age and gender sometimes and break it out later. And then of course someone with the 11y1d will complain about the 11y364d whooping them, but there's no perfect answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately the only way to make this "more fair" is to have smaller age groups - instead of the current 24 months (9-10, 11-12, 13-14) have 1 year or even 6 month brackets. Because as we all know, you can now have a 11y1d swimmer competing against a 12y364d swimmer in the same event - a 24 month difference. A reconciling would be to have the range be 6 months - 11y1d to 11y181d instead. But 1) there aren't always enough swimmers to flesh out a heat and then you have half empty heats which takes longer and then 2) you'd end giving out 4x as many medals etc. So unfortunately there isn't really a great solution for this that I can envision. Part of the problem is that the season is so long for the swimming (oct-apr or so) that it doesn't track well to have a singular cutoff.

You're right, the real source of the unfairness is the wide brackets and not the cut offs. There's a gigantic difference between a 11y1d and 12y364d kid in terms of physical development and you're going to have issues like that no matter what the cut off date is. I don't think it's really unsolvable though. You could make the brackets smaller and just swim kids together in heats when there aren't enough, but then produce the results by age. They do this in a lot of the mini meets where the 6-8s are in the same heats (and sometimes they even combine boys and girls heats), but then the results are Girls 8, Girls 7, and so on. One year brackets are also somewhat unfair (there's no perfect system), but a lot less so than the two year ones.

You could, but then you're also doubling the number of time standards needed - instead of 8U,9-10, 11-12,13-14,15+ you now need 8U,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17+? (I'll keep the 8Us together, I don't think there needs to be a separate 7U and 8 category. But yes you could easily swim like they do in the minis where they combine heats by age and gender sometimes and break it out later. And then of course someone with the 11y1d will complain about the 11y364d whooping them, but there's no perfect answer.

There are ways to shake it up and some clubs do meets once a season to do that. For example, Odd Ball Challenge- off age groups, I.e 10-11.

RMSC used to host NAG challenge which was single year bands, IMX is single year results, NCSA Age group champs has single age QTs. So, some of the opportunities are out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately the only way to make this "more fair" is to have smaller age groups - instead of the current 24 months (9-10, 11-12, 13-14) have 1 year or even 6 month brackets. Because as we all know, you can now have a 11y1d swimmer competing against a 12y364d swimmer in the same event - a 24 month difference. A reconciling would be to have the range be 6 months - 11y1d to 11y181d instead. But 1) there aren't always enough swimmers to flesh out a heat and then you have half empty heats which takes longer and then 2) you'd end giving out 4x as many medals etc. So unfortunately there isn't really a great solution for this that I can envision. Part of the problem is that the season is so long for the swimming (oct-apr or so) that it doesn't track well to have a singular cutoff.

You're right, the real source of the unfairness is the wide brackets and not the cut offs. There's a gigantic difference between a 11y1d and 12y364d kid in terms of physical development and you're going to have issues like that no matter what the cut off date is. I don't think it's really unsolvable though. You could make the brackets smaller and just swim kids together in heats when there aren't enough, but then produce the results by age. They do this in a lot of the mini meets where the 6-8s are in the same heats (and sometimes they even combine boys and girls heats), but then the results are Girls 8, Girls 7, and so on. One year brackets are also somewhat unfair (there's no perfect system), but a lot less so than the two year ones.

You could, but then you're also doubling the number of time standards needed - instead of 8U,9-10, 11-12,13-14,15+ you now need 8U,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17+? (I'll keep the 8Us together, I don't think there needs to be a separate 7U and 8 category. But yes you could easily swim like they do in the minis where they combine heats by age and gender sometimes and break it out later. And then of course someone with the 11y1d will complain about the 11y364d whooping them, but there's no perfect answer.

There are ways to shake it up and some clubs do meets once a season to do that. For example, Odd Ball Challenge- off age groups, I.e 10-11.

RMSC used to host NAG challenge which was single year bands, IMX is single year results, NCSA Age group champs has single age QTs. So, some of the opportunities are out there.

Oh, and once you get to some higher level meets, a heat of finals is reserved for the bottom of the age group or such. For example, NCSA has 16u heat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately the only way to make this "more fair" is to have smaller age groups - instead of the current 24 months (9-10, 11-12, 13-14) have 1 year or even 6 month brackets. Because as we all know, you can now have a 11y1d swimmer competing against a 12y364d swimmer in the same event - a 24 month difference. A reconciling would be to have the range be 6 months - 11y1d to 11y181d instead. But 1) there aren't always enough swimmers to flesh out a heat and then you have half empty heats which takes longer and then 2) you'd end giving out 4x as many medals etc. So unfortunately there isn't really a great solution for this that I can envision. Part of the problem is that the season is so long for the swimming (oct-apr or so) that it doesn't track well to have a singular cutoff.

You're right, the real source of the unfairness is the wide brackets and not the cut offs. There's a gigantic difference between a 11y1d and 12y364d kid in terms of physical development and you're going to have issues like that no matter what the cut off date is. I don't think it's really unsolvable though. You could make the brackets smaller and just swim kids together in heats when there aren't enough, but then produce the results by age. They do this in a lot of the mini meets where the 6-8s are in the same heats (and sometimes they even combine boys and girls heats), but then the results are Girls 8, Girls 7, and so on. One year brackets are also somewhat unfair (there's no perfect system), but a lot less so than the two year ones.

You could, but then you're also doubling the number of time standards needed - instead of 8U,9-10, 11-12,13-14,15+ you now need 8U,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17+? (I'll keep the 8Us together, I don't think there needs to be a separate 7U and 8 category. But yes you could easily swim like they do in the minis where they combine heats by age and gender sometimes and break it out later. And then of course someone with the 11y1d will complain about the 11y364d whooping them, but there's no perfect answer.

USA Swimming already has age group standards for single ages. It would be pretty easy to borrow off of that and make, say, the A time the qualifying time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

You do know that JOs is not a meet that every average swimmer is supposed to swim, right? They set the cuts fast to manage the size of the meet. My February bday 9/10 will be working hard next year to make cuts as a just-turned-10-year-old. He’ll probably make it in some and not in others. And that’s ok, because there are other meets at different times of the year where he will dominate.

The comment above asked that "Don't most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards." This was a response to that question. The answer is, no, most of the fast kids do not hit the following age group standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

You do know that JOs is not a meet that every average swimmer is supposed to swim, right? They set the cuts fast to manage the size of the meet. My February bday 9/10 will be working hard next year to make cuts as a just-turned-10-year-old. He’ll probably make it in some and not in others. And that’s ok, because there are other meets at different times of the year where he will dominate.

The comment above asked that "Don't most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards." This was a response to that question. The answer is, no, most of the fast kids do not hit the following age group standards.

If a kid is fast, they will make JOs at the bottom of the age bracket. If they’re very fast, they will make the next age bracket up’s standards. JO is a meet for fast and very fast kids. But there are also LOTS of other fast, special meets. At least one in each quarter. So this complaining is pretty ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

This, it’s no more than the top 5 10U in each event that already have made the 11-12 cut times.

Even fewer in some. Just 3 each in 50 Fly and 200 IM. And that is out of well over 1000 10&U boys in PVS.

do you use swim ranking to figure this out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t most of the fast kids hit the following age group standards? My kid was always focused on the next age group up). My 11/12 year old has the 14 year old JO cuts and is a decently fast but nothing amazing.

Yes. My fast 10U has already hit the 11/12 JO cuts.

Um, no. That would be a truly exceptional 10U to do that. Take 100 Free. The 11-12 cut is 1:02.39. In all of PVS this year, five 10U boys have that time.

This, it’s no more than the top 5 10U in each event that already have made the 11-12 cut times.

Even fewer in some. Just 3 each in 50 Fly and 200 IM. And that is out of well over 1000 10&U boys in PVS.

do you use swim ranking to figure this out?

Yes. Very easy to do. It will create a list of all the 10&U boys (or other category) in PVS by time on each event.

[Anonymous]

If you really want to dive into fairness in swimming here is a great read:

http://www.swimtheory.com/home/003-qualifying-times

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you really want to dive into fairness in swimming here is a great read:

http://www.swimtheory.com/home/003-qualifying-times

That was the dumbest thing I ever spent 15 minutes of my life reading, and I hang out here. The first part acknowledges cut times are set to get a goal number of athletes. Part two acknowledges there are more girls then boys participating. Then pages of handwringing about why a smaller percentage of girls can participate. Uh, see your own part 1?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you really want to dive into fairness in swimming here is a great read:

http://www.swimtheory.com/home/003-qualifying-times

That was the dumbest thing I ever spent 15 minutes of my life reading, and I hang out here. The first part acknowledges cut times are set to get a goal number of athletes. Part two acknowledges there are more girls then boys participating. Then pages of handwringing about why a smaller percentage of girls can participate. Uh, see your own part 1?

Does the author have a girl? Times are about percentages/math and so if you have more participating in a population they will be tougher to cut the chaff.