How to choose events for summer dual meets？

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The above is true but it is very rare to swim faster at a Monday meet than a Saturday meet. The Saturday meets tend to have better competition and a higher level of energy etc.

That being said the whole point of Saturday meets is that it is a team competition so if swimming your third best event helps get the team points then that is what you swim

+1, this is what makes summer swim different than club. It’s not about what is personally best for Larla, it’s what gives the team the best chance of winning.

We all know that and I don’t think anyone is arguing for transparency in order to get what is best for their kids. Heck, my strong yr round swimmer gets stuck in breast every time even though she hates it but she has the #1 spot in all strokes so they put her where she is needed. We are talking about transparency since not all teams use current yr best times to seed a meet.

Volunteer for the data manager position and you'll have more than enough data at your fingertips.

I wish! Our data manager wouldn’t let you pry that laptop from her to save her life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The above is true but it is very rare to swim faster at a Monday meet than a Saturday meet. The Saturday meets tend to have better competition and a higher level of energy etc.

That being said the whole point of Saturday meets is that it is a team competition so if swimming your third best event helps get the team points then that is what you swim

+1, this is what makes summer swim different than club. It’s not about what is personally best for Larla, it’s what gives the team the best chance of winning.

We all know that and I don’t think anyone is arguing for transparency in order to get what is best for their kids. Heck, my strong yr round swimmer gets stuck in breast every time even though she hates it but she has the #1 spot in all strokes so they put her where she is needed. We are talking about transparency since not all teams use current yr best times to seed a meet.

Volunteer for the data manager position and you'll have more than enough data at your fingertips.

I wish! Our data manager wouldn’t let you pry that laptop from her to save her life.

True story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The above is true but it is very rare to swim faster at a Monday meet than a Saturday meet. The Saturday meets tend to have better competition and a higher level of energy etc.

That being said the whole point of Saturday meets is that it is a team competition so if swimming your third best event helps get the team points then that is what you swim

+1, this is what makes summer swim different than club. It’s not about what is personally best for Larla, it’s what gives the team the best chance of winning.

We all know that and I don’t think anyone is arguing for transparency in order to get what is best for their kids. Heck, my strong yr round swimmer gets stuck in breast every time even though she hates it but she has the #1 spot in all strokes so they put her where she is needed. We are talking about transparency since not all teams use current yr best times to seed a meet.

Volunteer for the data manager position and you'll have more than enough data at your fingertips.

I wish! Our data manager wouldn’t let you pry that laptop from her to save her life.

Seriously? Wow that surprises me. Being data manager is a ton of work, not something there is usually competition for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Not this week! I didn’t have a swimmer in this situation but Monday times didn’t count for seeding the relays. They had to get teams in before that. Also, our last meet before divisionals is an A meet.

Not true. Results from the Monday B meet changed who swam in some relays for our team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Not this week! I didn’t have a swimmer in this situation but Monday times didn’t count for seeding the relays. They had to get teams in before that. Also, our last meet before divisionals is an A meet.

Not true. Results from the Monday B meet changed who swam in some relays for our team.

Interesting, not what we were told!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The above is true but it is very rare to swim faster at a Monday meet than a Saturday meet. The Saturday meets tend to have better competition and a higher level of energy etc.

That being said the whole point of Saturday meets is that it is a team competition so if swimming your third best event helps get the team points then that is what you swim

Of course. But coaches and reps also need to be mindful of who is taking the L for the team and spread the pain around. Some races are easier wins than others. It’s demoralizing for a kid to have to eat it consistently and watch slower swimmers rack up points in their best events while they fight for scraps in races they probably can’t win anything in. It definitely happens. Keeping things transparent keeps coaches accountable. I think sharing seed times should be mandatory for this reason.

It’s a lot to consider, and it’s not as simple as “fastest kids swim their fastest events”. It doesn’t always work out that way.

Also, I often see kids drop mad time on Mondays so I don’t know that you’re right on your first point.

I don’t agree about the demoralizing part. We are in a different league that allows the kids to swim more strokes at each meet, but this happened to my kid at the last meet and they just rolled with it. My kid is the fastest in all 4 strokes and IM at the low end of the age group, we swam against a team with another club kid that is a year older and who is legitimately elite. My kid came in second every time because they were matched up against the elite kid in all the same events. They took it as a challenge and swam multiple PBs because they rose to the level of the competition. One of my kid’s teammates swam the other events and got 1st place finishes because my kid and the elite kid weren’t in those events. Oh well, it happens. My kid didn’t give a second thought to it, they liked going head to head with the best kid.

Not exactly the situation I’m talking about. Getting second is great when you’re racing in an event that you are number 1 in on your team. Not being allowed to race in the event you’re number one in, so you can lose to the elite swimmer in your number 3 event is more like it. i won’t get into specifics because of privacy concerns but there ARE things that happen that are unfair.

This feels like such minutiae. If your swimmer is #1 in a stroke that the other team isn’t good at and your #2-4 swimmers can still beat them, you don’t need to use the #1 person. If your swimmer is swimming what is their 3rd best event they are probably still better at it than their teammates and therefore they have a better chance at earning points for the team in that event even if they won’t place 1st. My kid does a bunch of fly in the summer even though they hate it because they are better than their teammates at it. Those are the breaks of team summer swim. The club kids have all club season to focus on events that are their individual strengths.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but that’s not what I said. The swimmer in my example was ranked 3rd behind their teammates. The real life specifics were more egregious.

I only knew how awful it was because someone showed me the seed times which are *super secret* on our team. The kid had no chance, against the other team or the kids on their own team. Result was no extra points for the team, actually lost points because the slower swimmers that replaced the kid didn’t score, and the kid didn’t get to compete for a coveted relay spot. So this is why I think seed times need to be shared.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Not this week! I didn’t have a swimmer in this situation but Monday times didn’t count for seeding the relays. They had to get teams in before that. Also, our last meet before divisionals is an A meet.

Not true. Results from the Monday B meet changed who swam in some relays for our team.

Interesting, not what we were told!

We were told by our Division that we had until Tuesday, but we cut it off Saturday's A Meet. We did not count Monday's B Meet as we wanted to lock down our volunteers. Many of whom will not work unless they have a child swimming. That would have been a nightmare trying to do that plus the meet sheet on Tuesday.

[Anonymous]

Somewhat related I have seen this year at our pool. This hasn’t affected my child but there is an 8u whose best time in one of the non-freestyle events is very good. However they don’t consistently make A meets. I can see the justification. In that same stroke they have DQed a couple of times. It’s quite possible that there is something fundamentally wrong with their stroke (especially at a young age) that even when they don’t DQ, there may have been justification for an observant judge to do so. The coach probably realizes that so has to balance that risk as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is weird. And people that are saying “parents ask too many questions” are sus IMO.

I agree. Circa 2018 we had different coaching staff that didn’t circulate a ladder or meet results and with a new 8U I had no idea that results for A meets were posted online. Therefore when my kid beat 35 other kids in freestyle at a B meet I had no idea they should swim in the next A meet. A couple years later I saw the results in historical data in the new app. They were seeded 3rd fastest in free and never got picked for an A meet.

Fortunately everything is transparent now.

That’s terrible.

And also fiction. Coaches want to win. They swim the fastest kid.

This is one of my favorite things about swimming, the clock doesn’t lie and kids have a pure objective standard (times/champs cuts, etc.) they are working toward that isn’t impacted by whether Larla’s dad is the coach or Karla is the coach’s favorite. Not being transparent about seed times and the swimmers’ placement on the ladder undercuts all that.

It sure does. I think this will be the last season my kid puts up with it. Better things for a teen to do with their summers than swimming events they will lose and watching slower kids lose in the events they could win. I’m not sure what it’s teaching them other than to blindly sacrifice time to a coach’s whims or uneducated hunches.

Either our coach is a moron and can’t do basic math (possible) or playing favorites (possible), or both (likely). And people wonder why our team keeps losing!

Seed times should be included on the sheets, period.

Most parents won’t take the time look into the seeding until their kids are older and start asking questions, which happened to us. Once we looked closely, it took the shine right off of summer swim at our pool.

Hiding the ball is par for the course with NVSL though. Over it.

[Anonymous]

Every meet I just laugh as I watch the data person guard the 4 meet sheets with times like they are top secret. It is ridiculous. At relay carnival the referee argued with the data person for 5 min to get a copy with times. There is no reason to have these so “close hold” unless there is something to hide.

[Anonymous]

I am not saying this to make people feel bad but rather provide info to NVSL parents to know it doesn’t have to be so secretive. In MCSL, you can see all the data. Meet results are posted online and all star times are posted too. Coaches circulate b meet results every week. Kids are happy to the point the whole team shows up at the meet they aren’t swimming at to cheer on teammates (slower kids cheer on Saturdays and “fast” kids root on kids Wednesday nights). Plus we have Coaches LC which is a legit USA swimming meet.

My biggest complaint is the season makes the summer go by so quickly. And it takes a lot of volunteer hours.

I don’t quite understand what is going on with NVSL but it sounds kind of horrible. Sorry to be mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not saying this to make people feel bad but rather provide info to NVSL parents to know it doesn’t have to be so secretive. In MCSL, you can see all the data. Meet results are posted online and all star times are posted too. Coaches circulate b meet results every week. Kids are happy to the point the whole team shows up at the meet they aren’t swimming at to cheer on teammates (slower kids cheer on Saturdays and “fast” kids root on kids Wednesday nights). Plus we have Coaches LC which is a legit USA swimming meet.

My biggest complaint is the season makes the summer go by so quickly. And it takes a lot of volunteer hours.

I don’t quite understand what is going on with NVSL but it sounds kind of horrible. Sorry to be mean.

You know, one of the reasons we haven’t moved out of Fairfax county was our NVSL team but the past couple of years have really changed the equation! It is kind of horrible depending on your team and division.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every meet I just laugh as I watch the data person guard the 4 meet sheets with times like they are top secret. It is ridiculous. At relay carnival the referee argued with the data person for 5 min to get a copy with times. There is no reason to have these so “close hold” unless there is something to hide.

Yep!

NVSL does publish all meet results on their website, and you can pull a lot of data from reach for the wall after you have a meet sheet, but it’s time consuming and you have to do it manually. It’s really dumb for coaches not share the information and super dumb for NVSL to allow that. But good luck getting anything to change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every meet I just laugh as I watch the data person guard the 4 meet sheets with times like they are top secret. It is ridiculous. At relay carnival the referee argued with the data person for 5 min to get a copy with times. There is no reason to have these so “close hold” unless there is something to hide.

What division is this? We send our meet sheets to parents before every A meet, but even if you don’t have it, can’t you just see the times on the NVSL website? You still should have the meet sheet though.

I’m terms of relay carnival, the ref needs the meet sheet to run the meet so I’m sure they weren’t not giving it to the ref on purpose. Maybe they just didn’t know how to print it on the new software?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every meet I just laugh as I watch the data person guard the 4 meet sheets with times like they are top secret. It is ridiculous. At relay carnival the referee argued with the data person for 5 min to get a copy with times. There is no reason to have these so “close hold” unless there is something to hide.

What division is this? We send our meet sheets to parents before every A meet, but even if you don’t have it, can’t you just see the times on the NVSL website? You still should have the meet sheet though.

I’m terms of relay carnival, the ref needs the meet sheet to run the meet so I’m sure they weren’t not giving it to the ref on purpose. Maybe they just didn’t know how to print it on the new software?

Not the PP but in NVSL. We get the meet sheet, but not with seed times on it. If you want seed times you have to look up individual swimmers results to figure it all out yourself. The team could just provide the information when they provide the meet sheet but I guess our division voted not to do that. I think it should be mandatory. I strongly suspect our meets were seeded using last year’s times for the last meet because it was so bad.