October open - is the 13 plus session always so long?

[Anonymous]

The sessions were about 5 hours long....do those swim Open meets usually last that long? It was really a lot.

[Anonymous]

5 hours would have been welcome. This was terrible. What location?

[Anonymous]

My kid's 13+ session was all deck entry. Saturday's session took a LONG time as they needed to seed the meet and distribute heat sheets. Kid had the second warmup and said they sat for at least 40 minutes before starting. They did the seeding in two tranches, tho. Sunday was smoother and they finished about on time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid's 13+ session was all deck entry. Saturday's session took a LONG time as they needed to seed the meet and distribute heat sheets. Kid had the second warmup and said they sat for at least 40 minutes before starting. They did the seeding in two tranches, tho. Sunday was smoother and they finished about on time.

It wasn’t deck entries. It was positive check in. All events over 200 were positive checkin
Of the 10 events Saturday, 6 were positive checkin. And yes everything for those events had to be seeded and printed. But positive check in does save time on those longer events bc some kids don’t show and it’s often enough to reduce a heat, which for a 200 makes a big difference

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid's 13+ session was all deck entry. Saturday's session took a LONG time as they needed to seed the meet and distribute heat sheets. Kid had the second warmup and said they sat for at least 40 minutes before starting. They did the seeding in two tranches, tho. Sunday was smoother and they finished about on time.

It wasn’t deck entries. It was positive check in. All events over 200 were positive checkin
Of the 10 events Saturday, 6 were positive checkin. And yes everything for those events had to be seeded and printed. But positive check in does save time on those longer events bc some kids don’t show and it’s often enough to reduce a heat, which for a 200 makes a big difference

You are absolutely correct -- I should have said positive check in! It went much faster the second day, tho.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid's 13+ session was all deck entry. Saturday's session took a LONG time as they needed to seed the meet and distribute heat sheets. Kid had the second warmup and said they sat for at least 40 minutes before starting. They did the seeding in two tranches, tho. Sunday was smoother and they finished about on time.

It wasn’t deck entries. It was positive check in. All events over 200 were positive checkin
Of the 10 events Saturday, 6 were positive checkin. And yes everything for those events had to be seeded and printed. But positive check in does save time on those longer events bc some kids don’t show and it’s often enough to reduce a heat, which for a 200 makes a big difference

You are absolutely correct -- I should have said positive check in! It went much faster the second day, tho.

There were significantly less entries for Sunday. And the first event was a 100 so the meet could start

[Anonymous]

Is there a reason they don’t break it up into 13-14 and 15 and up or a girls session and boys session? It did seem really long.

[Anonymous]

We were at the Alexandria location. It was way too long. They need a fourth location for this meet.

[Anonymous]

The Opens are always brutal. I prefer the smaller meets but getting into those requires clubs to have relationships and parents that work the meets.

I think five hours is the normal. You always seem to have more swimmers for Saturday than Sunday (mine always swim both days, but a lot of families do not).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were at the Alexandria location. It was way too long. They need a fourth location for this meet.

We were as well, but this is what I remember it being like. It is really tough to get locations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We were at the Alexandria location. It was way too long. They need a fourth location for this meet.

We were as well, but this is what I remember it being like. It is really tough to get locations.

This was far worse than I remember. Opens have always been crowded and long, but this weekend was terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We were at the Alexandria location. It was way too long. They need a fourth location for this meet.

We were as well, but this is what I remember it being like. It is really tough to get locations.

This was far worse than I remember. Opens have always been crowded and long, but this weekend was terrible.

It’s definitely worse. Here is an example: look at the estimated time lines from Alexandria, Fairland and Claude Moore for Saturday morning (on PVS).

Scheduled end times:

Alexandria 12:50
Claude Moore 11:54
Fairland 11:17

This is without Alexandria running an hour behind by the end.

Claude Moore- largest event was women’s 100 free at 175 swimmers

Fairland: boys 100 free, 173 swimmers

Alexandria: 230 boys 100 free

This was insane and way, way too many swimmers in Alexandria. Positive check in was a mess. It was very unpleasant all 3 days.

[Anonymous]

^^ and total entries on Saturday morning:

Fairland 1,032

Alexandria 1,508

Claude Moore 1,200

[Anonymous]

They probably should have moved some of the swimmers from Alexandria to Fairland to even the numbers out. But clubs also hate being moved last minute. So there is that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They probably should have moved some of the swimmers from Alexandria to Fairland to even the numbers out. But clubs also hate being moved last minute. So there is that.

Other option is to cap entries. But the answer can’t be that clubs don’t like to be moved so those in this one location will be miserable.