Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those new to Championship Meets and swim meets in general:

If an athlete makes Finals, doesn't scratch, and fails to appear, that athlete faces penalties.

Additionally, if a meet cannot run to ensure fair and equitable competition, including staffing minimums, the meet will not be held until those minimums are met. Everything done on these decks are for the athletes.

Timer slots are not assigned for finals; finals requires timers. Competing is an option; if parents are unwilling to collectively step up and be willing to volunteer, have your athlete scratch from finals or be patient until the minimums are met to ensure fair and equitable competition.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. At senior champs, the meet (1500) WAS held but doors were not opened.

- take the money you’re putting towards bag checkers and pay for timers

- advertise for service hours to HS kids to time

- charge an entry fee and pay timers (campus was full of students)

- come up with reasonable solutions (telling timers they have to stay the whole finals session is not reasonable when their kid may be in the first event OR say upfront no guaranteed entry into the facility until we have timers but for every session you time, you get a wristband allowing you entry to an evening session, etc)

The solution to start the meet (which they did at senior champs) and then not let anyone (even previous timers) in is absurd.

+1,000 to all of this. PVS, if anyone comes across this post, please consider these suggestions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those new to Championship Meets and swim meets in general:

If an athlete makes Finals, doesn't scratch, and fails to appear, that athlete faces penalties.

Additionally, if a meet cannot run to ensure fair and equitable competition, including staffing minimums, the meet will not be held until those minimums are met. Everything done on these decks are for the athletes.

Timer slots are not assigned for finals; finals requires timers. Competing is an option; if parents are unwilling to collectively step up and be willing to volunteer, have your athlete scratch from finals or be patient until the minimums are met to ensure fair and equitable competition.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. At senior champs, the meet (1500) WAS held but doors were not opened.

- take the money you’re putting towards bag checkers and pay for timers

- advertise for service hours to HS kids to time

- charge an entry fee and pay timers (campus was full of students)

- come up with reasonable solutions (telling timers they have to stay the whole finals session is not reasonable when their kid may be in the first event OR say upfront no guaranteed entry into the facility until we have timers but for every session you time, you get a wristband allowing you entry to an evening session, etc)

The solution to start the meet (which they did at senior champs) and then not let anyone (even previous timers) in is absurd.

Anonymous wrote:For those new to Championship Meets and swim meets in general:

If an athlete makes Finals, doesn't scratch, and fails to appear, that athlete faces penalties.

Additionally, if a meet cannot run to ensure fair and equitable competition, including staffing minimums, the meet will not be held until those minimums are met. Everything done on these decks are for the athletes.

Timer slots are not assigned for finals; finals requires timers. Competing is an option; if parents are unwilling to collectively step up and be willing to volunteer, have your athlete scratch from finals or be patient until the minimums are met to ensure fair and equitable competition.

Anonymous wrote:Big picture I like that the prelims sign ups were apportioned by club. I timed Friday prelims and the coaches that were told to time were from the teams that didn’t have their slots filled, which seemed fair. That being said, the clubs need to do a better job in advance in making sure their slots are filled and figuring out how to handle the portion of their parents that refuse to volunteer. At the champs meets there absolutely should be a requirement to volunteer that you can’t buy your way out of (assuming that an admission fee to pay student timers isn’t put into place). You don’t commit to a slot before the meet starts, then your kid doesn’t swim.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The root cause is an insufficient number of parents willing to pull their weight. For every parent that had already timed a session and just wanted to spectate last night, there were probably at least two more that hadn’t, for no good reason (some have valid reasons). You can blame the host team, PVS, and/or UMD processes all you want, but that doesn’t change the number of volunteers required to run a swim meet. If all families felt the sense of accountability that some families feel, then they wouldn’t need to resort to these tactics. I’m really over the parents that show up at these multi-day meets and don’t volunteer a single session if they’re physically able to. You’re the problem. Why do you expect other families to do this on your behalf?

The problem is there were many parents on deck who had already timed previous sessions on Thursday and Friday and were treated very badly by a certain PVS official during the 800. Those parents are mostly your true champion volunteers and there was complete disregard for them Friday night.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent on deck Friday, I can attest it was the biggest single cluster that I have ever witnessed at a Champs event and PVS should be embarrassed by how it all went down. I witnessed one particular PVS official literally in glee saying how she proudly wasn’t letting any parents on the deck and was gloating how she was going to kick all parents out of the building. It was appalling. That particular official also started power tripping on deck with 800 parents, telling them they couldn’t leave and attempted to force them to time the whole session. I got her name and will be reporting her to the league. No official should act with that kind of complete contempt for parents who volunteer with timing constantly. The meet host was also way in over his head I’m in how to run a successful champs meet and it showed. Parents pay an exorbitant amount to these teams, volunteer around the clock, and work their tails off to get their kids to practices at all hours of the day. To rob them from watching their kids swim a finals champs race is downright wrong and PVS needs to find a better way.

WOW! This post here makes me sad for all our swimmers.

I too am a parent that pays “an exorbitant amount” to the teams, work my “tail off” to get my kids to practice at all hours of the day, and “volunteers around the clock.”

As an official for PVS who has volunteered my time for 100 PVS sessions this season alone, it’s disheartening to see this. Do I think that everyone should have to do what we as officials voluntarily do, not at all!

Many times official’s don’t have kids swimming in meets that we work at, or if we do, our swimmers wait and sit around so that we can help swimmer’s NOT OUR OWN get to swim.

When you say “rob them from watching their kid swim a finals champs” I have often thought, it’s really sad how hard the swimmers have worked to make it to finals for PVS to not be able to get 18 out of “800” parents to step up to help these kids swim. They’ve worked hard all season. They’ve warmed up. They’re ready to go, waiting behind the blocks, nervous and we can’t get 18 parents down to time. And if you have to stay to the end, well that’s awesome because you’ve helped other athletes accomplish something too and you’ve taught your swimmer that staying and cheering on teammates, or timing or sometimes having to sacrifice a little is a good thing for our community.

So instead of yelling at PVS, coaches, host teams, officials, how about you turn and yell at the multitude of parents who never volunteer instead and blame them the next time the swimmers, your children are standing behind the blocks while the rest of the deck is ready to go.

Anonymous wrote:As a parent on deck Friday, I can attest it was the biggest single cluster that I have ever witnessed at a Champs event and PVS should be embarrassed by how it all went down. I witnessed one particular PVS official literally in glee saying how she proudly wasn’t letting any parents on the deck and was gloating how she was going to kick all parents out of the building. It was appalling. That particular official also started power tripping on deck with 800 parents, telling them they couldn’t leave and attempted to force them to time the whole session. I got her name and will be reporting her to the league. No official should act with that kind of complete contempt for parents who volunteer with timing constantly. The meet host was also way in over his head I’m in how to run a successful champs meet and it showed. Parents pay an exorbitant amount to these teams, volunteer around the clock, and work their tails off to get their kids to practices at all hours of the day. To rob them from watching their kids swim a finals champs race is downright wrong and PVS needs to find a better way.

Anonymous wrote:The root cause is an insufficient number of parents willing to pull their weight. For every parent that had already timed a session and just wanted to spectate last night, there were probably at least two more that hadn’t, for no good reason (some have valid reasons). You can blame the host team, PVS, and/or UMD processes all you want, but that doesn’t change the number of volunteers required to run a swim meet. If all families felt the sense of accountability that some families feel, then they wouldn’t need to resort to these tactics. I’m really over the parents that show up at these multi-day meets and don’t volunteer a single session if they’re physically able to. You’re the problem. Why do you expect other families to do this on your behalf?

Anonymous wrote:As a parent on deck Friday, I can attest it was the biggest single cluster that I have ever witnessed at a Champs event and PVS should be embarrassed by how it all went down. I witnessed one particular PVS official literally in glee saying how she proudly wasn’t letting any parents on the deck and was gloating how she was going to kick all parents out of the building. It was appalling. That particular official also started power tripping on deck with 800 parents, telling them they couldn’t leave and attempted to force them to time the whole session. I got her name and will be reporting her to the league. No official should act with that kind of complete contempt for parents who volunteer with timing constantly. The meet host was also way in over his head I’m in how to run a successful champs meet and it showed. Parents pay an exorbitant amount to these teams, volunteer around the clock, and work their tails off to get their kids to practices at all hours of the day. To rob them from watching their kids swim a finals champs race is downright wrong and PVS needs to find a better way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only a handful of larger PVS teams have a proven track record of hosting these Champs meet. It absolutely begins and ends with the host team and TOLL and Henry T. absolutely dropped the ball on Friday night. Hopefully PVS is taking note.

Last week's fiasco was OCCS, and the same thing happened at spring champs scy, which was NCAP.