We went for only 2 events. Swam both yesterday and came home today despite qualifying for others. As someone pointed out, it is late in the summer and we are headed on vacation so this was our family compromise. |
Sorry, I was talking about 13/14. Seriously, almost none of top swimmers in that age group did go. |
A lot of the top 13/14 swimmers are not allowed to swim. They have higher level cuts and Zones is an age group meet that restricts those times. |
There are no NFT times at zones. That might be a team or an LSC policy (it's NOT the PVS policy), but it is not a meet or zone policy. |
Wrong. This is the meet announcement (read under “Eligibility”). https://www.gomotionapp.com/va/UserFiles/Image/QuickUpload/2024-ez-lc-age-group-champs-final_041893.pdf |
Do you even understand how fast those QTs of Summer and Winter Juniors let alone US Open and US Nationals??? I'm pretty sure there would be like one swimmer made Summer or Winter Junior time, if there's one, in the entire PVS. Which means those top 13/14 swimmers who may have easily come in top 3 in a lot of events just simply did not go to this championships. |
This. The vast majority of 13-14 year olds did not make cuts for those events. I think there were some PVS 14 year olds that qualified for Futures so it makes sense that they treated that as their season ending meet. August 7-10 is way too late to be having an age group meet. We know a lot of swimmers that elected to skip this meet because it was interfering with family vacations. |
There are literally zero 13-14 girls in PVS to whom that would apply. This is not what's keeping them away. It's just too late. |
Basically, the kids who had made Zones before (had the bag and the swag) didn’t go, kids qualifying for the first time did go (to get the bag and the swag.) I’d venture that most of the kids who went would have accepted an offer to pay for the swag and not actually swim. Our team’s attitude was basically “go if you want” but the entire vibe around it has been that it’s not a big deal.
And yeah, it’s too late, but the other option would be to do it during summer swim all stars which a lot of kids would also rather do. |
Never really thought about it in terms of swag, but I agree I think "one and done" is common. It's a nice goal, might be more realistic timing based on age during the year ("good birthday" meet), can be good/fun travel experience, but swimming in August is just too much! My kid went once at 10, and our family made other decisions - vacation, sleepaway camp - after that. My younger kid ended up not going ever between it becoming less of a thing and family summer priorities. I think coaching is another reason it's not any earlier. Clubs are spread thin to send coaches to summer championship travel meets, so you can't really schedule another the same week as Futures/NCSAs etc. |
At least for the age group kids in my sphere (of multiple clubs) the Zones team bag and jacket/fleece are pretty big status symbols for the kids. |
Your double negative makes your sentence mean the opposite of what you intend it to mean. |
I realize this is too late for this year, but how do you sign up for zones if a swimmer qualifies but the club is not participating? I saw no individual entries, so how do swimmers join if they want to go? |
For summer zones, it’s an LSC team so the kids aren’t representing their individual clubs. For PVS, all the information was on the PVS website for how to sign up. There was no application for PVS, if you had a QT you were allowed to go (some LSCs don’t take everyone that has a QT). It appears that next year’s LC Zones meet is the same weekend in August, so I would expect that PVS will again take anyone that has a QT since many qualified swimmers will again elect to skip it because it’s so late. |
That was the longest. meet. ever. So glad it’s finally over |