I was going to suggest this. B-meets last year were a bust for us, two thunderstorm rainouts. We're a big club so we do internal meets more often than not. So basically, just one real B-meet. At least one of those could have been saved with deck seeding IMO. So that B-meet kids could have gotten a little more competition. Our kids also have many kids on the bubble for A-meets and were looking to improve their times, and were just basically denied. |
| We're MCSL and always seed our B meets. Very few no-shows on our team, and everything just clocks along. There's sometimes a little chaos if other teams have more absences, but it's a lot easier to work out if there are already lists of who's supposed to be in that heat in the first place. I have trouble imagining how to run a B meet _without_ having a heat sheet in advance, so I have even more respect for those clerks of course now. |
Your referee needs to move the meet along faster. We have more than that and ran everything including IM in 3 hours, despite the weather. DQs should not slow things down. It’s not an A Dual meet. Just pick them up after the last heat of each event. If there’s any doubt pocket the call. Or get a chief judge. |
We do that with B meets. But Time Trials we run like an A meet so all the officials can do it correctly. |
I'd respectfully push back on thr DQs: B meets are often where new officials get their stats, and they need those consults with the referee to get better at their jobs. And B meet swimmers need the technique improvements that come with properly acknowledged DQs, so they shouldn't be skipped or minimized. |
| /starts |
I think all/most MCLS teams use automation for B meets now. I've been a swim team mom for 20+ years, and when we first started there would be teams who weren't automating B meets. It did not seem complicated at the time (because people were used to it), but, now it seems impossible to manage. |
Our MCSL pool treats TT like any other meet as well, declaring swimmers by Thursday and heat sheets sent out Friday as well. We do seed swimmers if they have times from last year. |
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I do automation for an MCSL team. We "seed" time trials using whatever old times we have and give everyone else NT. Then I seed the meet. I'll mix anything I really need to mix to save time (if there are 2 boys and 2 girls in 8U fly, we're swimming it mixed). It prints out separately anyway.
We will put out a TT meet program and then post results for our families. I never send out heat sheets. No one needs them. We get through TT in about 2.5 hours. Our team has about 140 swimmers. I forget how many made it to TT this year, but it was well attended. B meets are also seeded. Deck entering that many kids would make me run screaming from the deck. Things would get lost. I can handle a few scratches and deck entries, but more than that just isn't fair to the automation crew. (Or the swimmers, whose times will get lost.) |