There were a lot of older parents who just really wanted to get in there and sit on their phones. |
Are you saying that your kid was BB/barely A at 15 and then sometime between 15-18 became AAA/AAAA? Because that happens to an extremely small number of female swimmers. A BB/A 9-10 year old being AAA/AAAA by the time they are 15 absolutely does happen, but girls are generally not making that kind of jump after they have already gone through puberty. And yes, the girls who developed early/were very tall and strong at age 10 do have to withstand that time where the other kids start to catch up and it can be stressful when they are so used to winning. |
But the person PP is referring to didn’t say “if you haven’t made a final by the time you’re 14, maybe it’s time to stop swimming at championship meets”. They said to “find a new sport”. As in give up the sport you love and have been training for for years because you’re not going to the Olympics. If you read that comment and didn’t throw up in your mouth a little, you are the reason why all the joy has been sucked out of sports in the DMV. |
| The scary thing is that you throw up less in your mouth the more competitive a meet becomes. This isn't about the swimmers; it's about the parents' behavior and a mature understanding of reality. |
+ 1 I have a Futures kid and a kid that has never come close to an A time, nor a champs cut or final. Never in a million years would it occur to me to tell kid #2 they should just stop swimming. It’s okay to swim competitively for the sake of it, even if you’re not fast. All that to say, I do wonder if PVS Open Champs is trying to be too many different kinds of meets at once (although the session lengths weren’t at all unreasonable). Overall, the meet was efficient and well run. |
I have several kids and they run the gamut on swim. So I am in your camp and believe that all of my kids need opportunities and use swim for different reasons. For the most part, this was a great meet. The hosts did a great job and better than most meets that I have attended. They tried to apportion the volunteer roles by the teams. Being held from entering because your team did not put up its volunteers is a way of life. Most of the families complaining on here, do not volunteer. They want to sit in the stands, video their swimmer (with commentary! wth) and complain. If you cared about your swimmer you would work the meet. I do like the idea of volunteers getting an all access band. That is brilliant and they should be allowed in first and not wait in line for the rest of the meet. This should be seriously considered. The officials running all of finals was AMAZING. THANK YOU. I don't think parents realize what a treat that is at a finals meet. I have been at meets where they started the finals (i.e. boys pool while waiting on timers for girls pool) and held parents outside until it happened. If it matters to you, then you should be part of the solution. The only critcism to the meet dealt with bonus events. Either do not allow them or have a minimum entry time for them - particularly on the 100s and 200s. But I lean towards just not having bonus events like 14&Unders. You get in what you get in on. I was fine with generous cuts for the 50s, those events move so fast it was not bad at all. But the longer events should be tougher to get in on, even my swimmer commented that there were some really slow times on 100 fly for the girls that were swimming. I assume that was all bonus event entries, I did not look at the cut time. The finals were fine. They were short and moved fast. I think that prelims should be tightened up a little. Oh, and something needed to be done with the warm down pool during prelims. It was an absolute zoo. It looked very dangerous and I am shocked that none of the swimmers got hurt. Kids just hanging out chatting, long wait times, swimmers sprinting when it is a warm down pool, no room, etc. Perhaps have a no standing lane? Have some lanes just for boys and some for girls? Have a lane for those coming for warm ups later in the meet and the other lanes for warm down. That was causing some issues or coaches monitoring them. It was fine for finals though. |
Are you suggesting that a mature understanding of reality includes a swimmer dropping the sport because they’re not fast enough? |
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I just hope they upload results to Swimcloud promptly!
Thought the meet was run pretty well..not sure why people are complaining. |
Serious question: why is someone saying something (no one waited an hour) emphatically when they knew they were lying? Because we had a grandparent in town who has never seen my senior swim before, is ill, and will likely never see them swim again. This grandparent wanted to get a good seat. So I waited in line while grandparent waited at a bench. Is that okay? Perhaps you saw the person sitting there? Wth… Last year the mile events did NOT open on time. Parents waited outside the closed doors and the meet was going on. This meet always has issues. To charge entry this year and still have entry issues is ridiculous. |
Totally agree with you about the warm-down pool and noticed the exact same thing as it was probably the worst I’ve ever seen, but thinking about it that is likely the direct result of having to easy of cuts (girls open cuts being basically equal to 13-14 girls cuts) for this level of meet. Before someone comes in here saying that is another elitist comment, for example we can simply move the girls 100 back cut to a 1:03.19. While it’s harder for girls to drop post puberty, they don’t stop all together and that is seen with the USA motivational times as while they don’t get faster by as much as the boys from 13-14 to 15-16, they still do get faster. 1:03.19 is the same distance from the 15-16 ‘A’ time as the 13-14 champs cut is from the 13-14 ‘A’ time. That time is still basically 4 seconds off the sectional cut in the 100 back so plenty of athletes not at that level still get a meet but it reduces the number of swimmers in that event from 233 to 137 swimmers which is absolutely plenty for an LSC CHAMPIONSHIP meet. |
+1, the situation in the cool down pool can only be rectified by having fewer swimmers at the meet, which means tightening up some of the qualifying standards. I agree they should use the 15-16 motivational standards to set the cuts. None of the cuts should be below an A 15-16 standard. |
I marshaled one of the days and cutting the numbers slightly and policing the pool would help. there were a lot of teens just hanging out in the pool because it was warm. They should have been told to move along or get out. |
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I dont really understand the consternation about the meet this year and not last year. This meet was pretty much the Jr/Sr Champs combined. The boys cuts seemed a bit harder than last year’s Jr Champs and the girls were about the same. Felt like the same number of kids. Same number of final heats.
Did it feel better somehow to have certain heats tagged Junior instead? As was pointed out, this meet is never going to be one that the top kids really aim for, so I don’t see why it is problematic that the meet isn’t geared towards the elite swimmers. The sessions weren’t any longer than last year. |
| Also if you hated this meet, boy do I have bad news about what the long course version is gonna look like. |
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Meet info sheet said: “ Spectator seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, provided that all required volunteer positions are filled to run the
meet.” Volunteers were not used at finals so seating should have been open allowing parents to show their pass. If it meant some shared a pass, well then it saved the host team from sitting and scanning and it would probably be very few who scammed the system. Seems pretty simple. |