Question about BB, A, AA etc.

[Anonymous]

The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

This is very club, site and age group dependent. We are with NCAP and our site sent most of the 9-12 year olds to October Open and some 13 and overs, but the high performing 13 and over training groups had other meets in October.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hanging out at the PVS October Open this weekend and studying times to pass the time. I’m noticing there are very few times being swum better than BB and essentially no AAA or AAAA times at all. In an event of 100 or more swimmers in the 11-12s, there might be 3-4 A times and perhaps 1-2 AA times. Sometimes there are no AA times. I thought A was supposed to be top 15% and AA top 8%. What’s going on?

I also don't think A and AA correspond to the same percentiles in the younger age groups. At the spring championship meets an AA time is close to making finals in the younger groups, but in the older groups everyone has an AA time or better. Consider for example that there are 21 AA or better times in 100 free out of 1,176 11-12 boys -- https://swimmerstats.com/strokes.php?lsc=PV&stroke=1&code=X&sex=M&age=11-12&course=Y&distance=100 -- which puts the AA cut line at the top 1.79% of swimmers. In the same event, there are 249 AA or better times for 17-18 boys out of a much smaller pool or swimmers -- https://swimmerstats.com/strokes.php?lsc=PV&course=Y&code=X&stroke=1&distance=100&sex=M&age=17-18 -- so in this case AA corresponds to the top 34.7% of swimmers.

The 11-12 AA cut is 58.69, right? So actually only 8 of the 1176 11-12 boys in PVS have that cut. I guess AA is not top 8%, or PVS has a really bad crop of swimmers in that group.

It hard to make that assessment at this point in the season, I’m sure there were many more 11-12s that had the AA last season but they have aged up since the end of last SC season. Last SC season 57 11-12 boys in PVS hit the AA time or better. Swimstandards site is good for this kind of analysis.

https://swimstandards.com/rankings/100fr-scy-11-12-male-pv?u_season=2324&u_season_start=2023&u_season_end=2024&page=3

Good point. Many kids probably swam their first meet of the season this past weekend. On the other hand, the swimstandards site only has the top 1000 and there are clearly a lot more than that since the other lost already had 1,200 on it before this weekend’s results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

Is ASA considered a big club nowadays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

AAC did not send any of their competitive groups. Machine did not send any of their higher level groups. OCCS did not attend. York did not send their top groups.

Better off comparing the results of the meets that were all held this weekend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

Is ASA considered a big club nowadays?

Maybe not as big as others in terms of the number of swimmers, but I think of them with RMSC, NCAP, Machine and AAC in terms of the quality of their top swimmers. I’m also not an ASA parent, just been at enough meets with them to know their top swimmers could compete anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hanging out at the PVS October Open this weekend and studying times to pass the time. I’m noticing there are very few times being swum better than BB and essentially no AAA or AAAA times at all. In an event of 100 or more swimmers in the 11-12s, there might be 3-4 A times and perhaps 1-2 AA times. Sometimes there are no AA times. I thought A was supposed to be top 15% and AA top 8%. What’s going on?

I also don't think A and AA correspond to the same percentiles in the younger age groups. At the spring championship meets an AA time is close to making finals in the younger groups, but in the older groups everyone has an AA time or better. Consider for example that there are 21 AA or better times in 100 free out of 1,176 11-12 boys -- https://swimmerstats.com/strokes.php?lsc=PV&stroke=1&code=X&sex=M&age=11-12&course=Y&distance=100 -- which puts the AA cut line at the top 1.79% of swimmers. In the same event, there are 249 AA or better times for 17-18 boys out of a much smaller pool or swimmers -- https://swimmerstats.com/strokes.php?lsc=PV&course=Y&code=X&stroke=1&distance=100&sex=M&age=17-18 -- so in this case AA corresponds to the top 34.7% of swimmers.

Just an FYI, swimmerstats is not a great site because it routinely misses meets. For example a bunch of NCAP sites went to a meet in Charlottesville last weekend and that meet is not on that site, last weekend’s Harvest Moon meet is also not on there.

Agree. My swimmers were in Charlottesville, which is a faster meet and heading to Richmond later this month. Our gold swimmers tend to have meets that aren’t on the PVS site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

Our NCAP site wasn’t there. They attended other meets the weekend before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

AAC did not send any of their competitive groups. Machine did not send any of their higher level groups. OCCS did not attend. York did not send their top groups.

Better off comparing the results of the meets that were all held this weekend.

OCCS like RMSC puts on their own meets, they never swim at the open meets. It’s good that not every club/site does the opens or the already long sessions would be even longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The faster and bigger clubs were not at the Open. The Open is an opportunity to PVS that other leagues don’t offer. Allows smaller clubs and those without meets an opportunity to swim each month and get times. Clubs generally don’t send their top swimmers to these meets if they can help it.

Really? The only big clubs that weren’t there as far as I can tell were RMSC ( who never go to opens) and ASA. What other big clubs skipped?

AAC did not send any of their competitive groups. Machine did not send any of their higher level groups. OCCS did not attend. York did not send their top groups.

Better off comparing the results of the meets that were all held this weekend.

OCCS like RMSC puts on their own meets, they never swim at the open meets. It’s good that not every club/site does the opens or the already long sessions would be even longer.

Weirdly enough we just got the November Open meet announcement and OCCS is hosting the PWC site. Between them and NCAP West that will be a very large meet. It looks like they tried to account for that because there are far fewer teams at that site than the other sites.

[Anonymous]

Go read the meet announcement for the meet. It may be a meet where the swimmers couldn't enter if they already had an A time in that event. A lot of the fast swimmers also don't typically go to the "Open" style meets that don't have minimum time requirements to attend and instead only swim at the "Invitational" meets.

It's not uncommon for a single club to be attending 2-4 different meets in a single weekend to provide the best meet possible for all their swimmers of different abilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go read the meet announcement for the meet. It may be a meet where the swimmers couldn't enter if they already had an A time in that event. A lot of the fast swimmers also don't typically go to the "Open" style meets that don't have minimum time requirements to attend and instead only swim at the "Invitational" meets.

It's not uncommon for a single club to be attending 2-4 different meets in a single weekend to provide the best meet possible for all their swimmers of different abilities.

+1. Within a club like Machine different locations and practice groups have different "focus" meets. For some of the younger kids it is an Open meet. For more older and more serious meets, they have other goal meets that they target. Or sometimes, for the older more serious swimmers, coaches may only target 1 or 2 events during an open meet.