What are the various summer leagues policies on swimmers and gender identification

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a quick reality-check is probably in order here. Despite the current moral panic over trans* kids, the number of kids who 1) identify as trans; and 2) have begun any sort of medicalized gender affirming treatment; and 3) Are AMAB transitioning to female, is miniscule.

OP may be a real person or may be a troll, but if they are a real person, then their child is in an incredibly small minority assuming they've undergone a medical transition of any sort.

We're having a whole culture war freakout about the "end of women's sports" about an issue that impacts at most a handful of kids per state.

Why is it ok that a handful of female athletes per state are put at an unfair competitive advantage by having to compete against someone born male? In swim, that means girls are not making finals, not medaling, etc., because they’re having to swim against someone who we normally put in a whole different category because of inherent biological advantages.

And cheered on by Megan Rapinoe, who leaves the sport before she can lose her spot to a guy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about just two categories:

(1) biological females who have not undergone testosterone therapy.

*I understand that it is not straightforward to define what is a biological female, but some definition could be attempted

(2) open-category which can include biological males, trans-boys, trans-girls, non-binary, and even biological females if they wish to compete in the open category

And everyone can wear a bathing suit that covers their torso if they would like to

Women's fast suits offer an advantage over jammers. There is a reason that they are banned for men

Did they ban those suits that the US team was wearing at the Olympics? I think I first saw them in Atlanta or Sydney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about just two categories:

(1) biological females who have not undergone testosterone therapy.

*I understand that it is not straightforward to define what is a biological female, but some definition could be attempted

(2) open-category which can include biological males, trans-boys, trans-girls, non-binary, and even biological females if they wish to compete in the open category

And everyone can wear a bathing suit that covers their torso if they would like to

Women's fast suits offer an advantage over jammers. There is a reason that they are banned for men

Did they ban those suits that the US team was wearing at the Olympics? I think I first saw them in Atlanta or Sydney.

Yes, those were the speedo lzr suits. Banned in 2010. They had polyurethane panels which reduced drag by 24%. The ones today have to be a woven or knitted material and for men, can’t cover more than jammers. But nvsl isn’t USA swimming, so they could make their own rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

This sound awful, it would ruin the fun competitiveness of a dual meet (I’m still not convinced you’ve ever been to one).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

This sound awful, it would ruin the fun competitiveness of a dual meet (I’m still not convinced you’ve ever been to one).

yeah- I don't think the poster has ever been to an NVSL 'a' meet either. For one thing- they are misinterpreting the results to mean there were only '24' swimmers in '6 heats.' There is a lot wrong with this statement. The most glaring one is that the NVSL website is only showing swimmers who finished legally ('their places') and so a swimmer who DQ'd is not shown. I'm guessing the 'random' meet the poster picked had 12 dq's in the 50 fly. That's a lot FWIW, but not unheard of. Its really uncommon to have an empty lane in an 'a' meet. It probably happens more as you go down the divisions- but certainly in the top 10 divisions its highly unlikely. Now- its possibly that someone was supposed to swim, got sick, they weren't able to make a sub that morning etc- but again fairly uncommon.
It's also wrong to think of that example as '6 heats.' No there was 1 heat. There were 6 different events. For each of these events, the kids stepped to the line, had their name announced (in lane 1, 3, and 5 swimming for blah blah pool, we have Larla swimmer, lana swimmer, etc.) raced, people cheered. 'A' meets go pretty fast, they don't need to 'go faster.' Part of the fun of the meet is the formalities of it. The better equivalent is a 'finals' event of a PVS meet rather than a regular meet. Also- I strongly suspect that 'going by seed times' would basically mean you ran the events girl, boy age up. Its pretty uncommon that a 10 year old female a meet swimmer is going to beat a 12 year old female a meet swimmer, etc.

Could you run summer NVSL swim like year round swimming, focus just on seed times, and run everything mixed gender, and sort at points at the end? Yes, you 'could' but you would be doing a very different thing. There is zero benefit to this type of change. I can understand conceptually 'how to do it,' its just a really bad idea. And it gains nothing. Biological boys don't need to swim with the girls. We don't need to fundamentally change our approach to sports to accommodate this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

This sound awful, it would ruin the fun competitiveness of a dual meet (I’m still not convinced you’ve ever been to one).

I agree that this sounds like an awful idea. Sure, it would speed up the heat but would diminish the excitement of individual heats with kids trying to their team points for 1-3rd place. You wouldn’t be able to know immediately where each competitor finished in their event, and the cheering by teammates would be less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

This sound awful, it would ruin the fun competitiveness of a dual meet (I’m still not convinced you’ve ever been to one).

I agree that this sounds like an awful idea. Sure, it would speed up the heat but would diminish the excitement of individual heats with kids trying to their team points for 1-3rd place. You wouldn’t be able to know immediately where each competitor finished in their event, and the cheering by teammates would be less.

Yes. Boys and girls separate is completely normal and fun and it shouldn’t change.

Have you ever been a point behind at the last relay and the excitement that either the boys or girls could pull the win for the team?

[Anonymous]

It is time to get rid of men’s and women’s divisions and just have one competition for all. This should apply to all sports including Olympics. Tired of hearing both sides about unfairness. One competition open to all does away with this and also one locker room. This include Rapinoe who wants equal pay even though the women’s team generates far less revenue. She should compete for a roster spot against men. If she earns a spot she gets paid otherwise she can find a real job and earn a living another way.
There I fixed it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is time to get rid of men’s and women’s divisions and just have one competition for all. This should apply to all sports including Olympics. Tired of hearing both sides about unfairness. One competition open to all does away with this and also one locker room. This include Rapinoe who wants equal pay even though the women’s team generates far less revenue. She should compete for a roster spot against men. If she earns a spot she gets paid otherwise she can find a real job and earn a living another way.
There I fixed it.

Yes, if biologic men can’t compete in women’s sports we should do away with women’s sports altogether.

Makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a quick reality-check is probably in order here. Despite the current moral panic over trans* kids, the number of kids who 1) identify as trans; and 2) have begun any sort of medicalized gender affirming treatment; and 3) Are AMAB transitioning to female, is miniscule.

OP may be a real person or may be a troll, but if they are a real person, then their child is in an incredibly small minority assuming they've undergone a medical transition of any sort.

We're having a whole culture war freakout about the "end of women's sports" about an issue that impacts at most a handful of kids per state.

Ridiculous! We saw exactly how bad the impact is on female sports when 1 swimmer (minuscule number) swam at the college level.

[Anonymous]

If sex is different from gender, just rename the categories “male and female” instead of “boys and girls.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t sound very familiar with A meet at a dual meet format. Do you have a HS or college swimmer (I do and I was one- which means I’m also very familiar with club meets). So A meats run one heat of boys and one heat of girls. If you mix genders you have two heats 3 scoring entries per team per event. A trans girl swimmer would have to fill a male slot in the entries and then you could race them based on time, the fastest heat would usually be all the boys and the first heat girls (but you’d have a few exceptions especially at teams without a lot of year round swimmers)

This isn’t rocket science. Enter the kids and their seed times. Run the mixed gender/age heats. Calculate the scores at the end depending on time. The times supercede the order of heat finishes. Accept thanks from parents for a shortened meet.

I don’t think you know how nvsl ‘a’ meets work. USA seimming meeting are not run like ‘a’ meets. In an a meet each team gets to enter 3 boys and 3 girls in each age group event. They are assigned lanes by team, not by time. So there is not a way to accommodate’ a biological boy who wants to swim in the girls event. It’s definitely not shortening the meet. The meet is just 1 heat of everything. B meets vary much more.

Again, it’s not rocket science. The big change is that nvsl has to change the rules and assign heats and lanes by times and not by teams/age/gender. Each kid comes into the meet with a seed time or NT. The 25’s stay 8U or 10U for fly and the rest are 14u 50’s. You put all the entries in psych sheet order and make heats from that order. There will be 10u girls who have faster seed times than some 12u and even 14u boys. The reason why this make the meet run faster is that you won’t have multiple heats of 50 free/fly/breast/back where there is one kid in each heat who is 10 sec slower than everyone else. Take a look at an A meet on meet mobile and imagine that all the 50 fly races are grouped by time alone. All the kids who take more than a minute are grouped together. Half empty heats can be consolidated.

I took a quick look at a random A meet last season - they ran 6 heats of 50 fly for the three age groups of boys and girls in a 6 lane pool. There were only 24 swimmers in those heats. There were 6 swimmers in 3 heats with times of 50 sec+. If you had mixed heats, you would have had 4 heats and put the 6 slowest swimmers in one heat. Conservatively, this would have shaved 3-4 minutes of swim time, plus another few minutes to get swimmers ready, timers ready etc between heats, so 6-8 min total. Repeat for other 50’s and now your event length is 20-25 min shorter. Combine relays to fill the lanes and now your meet can drop another 10-15 min.

Regardless of fairness, nvsl might consider this rule change to allow faster meets when there is approaching weather. In a pool that can run 8 lanes, the meet can really zip by if mixed heats were allowed.

NVSL is not one for change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:a 16 year old biological boy is going to cream biological girls. Gender is a huge advantage in swimming. Note the 15-18 all star free style swim times- 18 kids swim. the boy who came in 18th would have taken first place swimming as a girl
https://www.mynvsl.com/results/26586?back=dt

I don't disagree with you at all. But there should be a policy out there, written. There are definite biological advantages, the same way all stars tends to be dominated by the 19 years olds that swim in 15-18. But there is a rule there.

This is not true.

If you look at the all star times yes, there are 18 year olds who may really be 19, but there are also 15 and 16 yr olds at the top. After puberty age matters less. Do you really think that a kid who is 18 and 11months vs a 19 makes a difference?

All of the male NVSL records were set by a 16 yr old. So there goes your theory that only the 19 year old dominate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is time to get rid of men’s and women’s divisions and just have one competition for all. This should apply to all sports including Olympics. Tired of hearing both sides about unfairness. One competition open to all does away with this and also one locker room. This include Rapinoe who wants equal pay even though the women’s team generates far less revenue. She should compete for a roster spot against men. If she earns a spot she gets paid otherwise she can find a real job and earn a living another way.
There I fixed it.

What happened to you that made you hate women so much?