A meet picks?

[Anonymous]

This is my DD's second year of summer swim and she is on the cusp of making A meets (top 4 or 5) for several events. She is 7. On our team (I expect this is common), the top 2 or 3 are the top in every thing. How does the coach pick who swims? Will they take someone who can swim multiple events or just the top three for each? It seems as though while the process appears straight forward at first, there is some subjectivity.

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

She’s 7 and you’re worried about this? I recommmend you relax. She will get her chances next year.

[Anonymous]

So they look at the other team to see what they have.

So team A is seeding against team B.

Team A has a swimmer fast in Free, back and Breast but can only swim two events (NVSL).

Team B has a swimmer that can beat Team A's swimmer in Free. So Team A would not swim their fast swimmer in that event because they would be giving up points. They would swim them in Back and Breast.

It basically starts like this for each stroke. You work to to see what your lane one and lane two swimmers can do and sometimes you even have a great lane three swimmer. Sometimes you know that your lane three swimmer will not pick up points so you don't care who is in that slot and will just pick the next person down.

Team A's goal is to pick up points. They don't really care about the individual swimmers. Depending on where they put the top swimmers impacts those cusp swimmers. This weekend there are a lot of conflicts, so historically teams move further down the ladder in who swims.

This can make swimmers swimming this weekend think that they are A meet swimmers when they are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She’s 7 and you’re worried about this? I recommmend you relax. She will get her chances next year.

Op here. I can see why you took this the way you did, but I am not stressed about it -- just trying to understand. She is super excited about the idea of swimming on a Saturday and I want to understand how much to temper her expectations and be able to explain how the process works. To be honest, the idea of driving 45 mins away on a Saturday is not appealing to me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So they look at the other team to see what they have.

So team A is seeding against team B.

Team A has a swimmer fast in Free, back and Breast but can only swim two events (NVSL).

Team B has a swimmer that can beat Team A's swimmer in Free. So Team A would not swim their fast swimmer in that event because they would be giving up points. They would swim them in Back and Breast.

It basically starts like this for each stroke. You work to to see what your lane one and lane two swimmers can do and sometimes you even have a great lane three swimmer. Sometimes you know that your lane three swimmer will not pick up points so you don't care who is in that slot and will just pick the next person down.

Team A's goal is to pick up points. They don't really care about the individual swimmers. Depending on where they put the top swimmers impacts those cusp swimmers. This weekend there are a lot of conflicts, so historically teams move further down the ladder in who swims.

This can make swimmers swimming this weekend think that they are A meet swimmers when they are not.

This is super helpful - thank you!! This is probably a dumb question but how do the coaches know the other team's swimmers times?

[Anonymous]

On our team (MCSL), generally it is the top 3 in each event (6 for freestyle). But each swimmer is limited to 3 events (not including IM or relays). So if you have 3 swimmers who are the top 3 in each event, other swimmers who are #4 will get in because those 3 swimmers can't swim all 4 events.

[Anonymous]

Though I should add that in the 8 and unders, sometimes there is consideration of who won't get DQed. If a swimmer has a good time and is 7, but only got that time once and otherwise consistently gets DQed, the coach may pick another swimmer who maybe has a slightly slower time but has a chance of placing and getting points rather than getting DQed.

[Anonymous]

And in MCSL there are 2 heats of free. So 6 kids swim freestyle at every A meet, and free is not always the 3rd event for the fastest kids. Consider an example like this:

Fast kid A: back, breast, fly
Fast kid B: free, back, fly
Fast kid C: free, back, breast
Fast kid D: free, breast, fly

Still leaves 3 spaces in free only for other kids. And if any of my imaginary Fast kids above are only assigned two races, even more space for an additional kid.

MCSL says -up to- 3 events per kid, not counting IM or relays. A coach could conceivably do one event per kid and bring the entire age group to an A meet, but that would not maximize points. To win a dual meet you have to know (or have a pretty good guess) which of your swimmers can score in which events and plan from there. The times are scientific, yes, but knowing which events your fastest swimmers should -skip- is somewhat of an art.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So they look at the other team to see what they have.

So team A is seeding against team B.

Team A has a swimmer fast in Free, back and Breast but can only swim two events (NVSL).

Team B has a swimmer that can beat Team A's swimmer in Free. So Team A would not swim their fast swimmer in that event because they would be giving up points. They would swim them in Back and Breast.

It basically starts like this for each stroke. You work to to see what your lane one and lane two swimmers can do and sometimes you even have a great lane three swimmer. Sometimes you know that your lane three swimmer will not pick up points so you don't care who is in that slot and will just pick the next person down.

Team A's goal is to pick up points. They don't really care about the individual swimmers. Depending on where they put the top swimmers impacts those cusp swimmers. This weekend there are a lot of conflicts, so historically teams move further down the ladder in who swims.

This can make swimmers swimming this weekend think that they are A meet swimmers when they are not.

This is super helpful - thank you!! This is probably a dumb question but how do the coaches know the other team's swimmers times?

You can pull up the team's meets on the NVSL website. Coaches will often try to calculate improvements and even look at a swimmer's winter swim times (Club). The first few meets are tough, you are looking at last year's meets.

Granted there are some teams that do not do any of this and just seed based on time, with no thought of the other team. Some teams will take into account a swimmer's preferred strokes. If a team can put in one or two swimmers that are equal, they might choose the harder working swimmer or the one whose dad/mom is an official (because they need the people to work the meet). Every team has its own personalities.

In the end this is Rec swimming and has a lot of variables (think little league) and should be about as serious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And in MCSL there are 2 heats of free. So 6 kids swim freestyle at every A meet, and free is not always the 3rd event for the fastest kids. Consider an example like this:

Fast kid A: back, breast, fly
Fast kid B: free, back, fly
Fast kid C: free, back, breast
Fast kid D: free, breast, fly

Still leaves 3 spaces in free only for other kids. And if any of my imaginary Fast kids above are only assigned two races, even more space for an additional kid.

MCSL says -up to- 3 events per kid, not counting IM or relays. A coach could conceivably do one event per kid and bring the entire age group to an A meet, but that would not maximize points. To win a dual meet you have to know (or have a pretty good guess) which of your swimmers can score in which events and plan from there. The times are scientific, yes, but knowing which events your fastest swimmers should -skip- is somewhat of an art.

For little ones I could see a coach not having a kid do back to back events (e.g., breast before fly) if it might make them tired for the last event if they weren't going to score points in the prior event anyways. Yes, they're short races but they're also little swimmers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in MCSL there are 2 heats of free. So 6 kids swim freestyle at every A meet, and free is not always the 3rd event for the fastest kids. Consider an example like this:

Fast kid A: back, breast, fly
Fast kid B: free, back, fly
Fast kid C: free, back, breast
Fast kid D: free, breast, fly

Still leaves 3 spaces in free only for other kids. And if any of my imaginary Fast kids above are only assigned two races, even more space for an additional kid.

MCSL says -up to- 3 events per kid, not counting IM or relays. A coach could conceivably do one event per kid and bring the entire age group to an A meet, but that would not maximize points. To win a dual meet you have to know (or have a pretty good guess) which of your swimmers can score in which events and plan from there. The times are scientific, yes, but knowing which events your fastest swimmers should -skip- is somewhat of an art.

For little ones I could see a coach not having a kid do back to back events (e.g., breast before fly) if it might make them tired for the last event if they weren't going to score points in the prior event anyways. Yes, they're short races but they're also little swimmers.

If it’s MCSL, back is event 18 (for girls) and 30 for breast. Not exactly back to back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And in MCSL there are 2 heats of free. So 6 kids swim freestyle at every A meet, and free is not always the 3rd event for the fastest kids. Consider an example like this:

Fast kid A: back, breast, fly
Fast kid B: free, back, fly
Fast kid C: free, back, breast
Fast kid D: free, breast, fly

Still leaves 3 spaces in free only for other kids. And if any of my imaginary Fast kids above are only assigned two races, even more space for an additional kid.

MCSL says -up to- 3 events per kid, not counting IM or relays. A coach could conceivably do one event per kid and bring the entire age group to an A meet, but that would not maximize points. To win a dual meet you have to know (or have a pretty good guess) which of your swimmers can score in which events and plan from there. The times are scientific, yes, but knowing which events your fastest swimmers should -skip- is somewhat of an art.

For little ones I could see a coach not having a kid do back to back events (e.g., breast before fly) if it might make them tired for the last event if they weren't going to score points in the prior event anyways. Yes, they're short races but they're also little swimmers.

It would have to be a really deep team to have the luxury of not swimming a legal 8U in a technical stroke in order to "save" them for the following one! I think most teams are likely to have to make the assumption that the swimmers with the best times are also the swimmers with the most stamina to make it through a meet. In NVSL in particular there are fewer events per swimmer in an A meet.