Poolside Chat: parents of competitive swimmers

[2ducksandI]

Seems I managed to fill the other thread with talk of taking fridges to away galas! And I didnt even mean a fridge I meant an electric cool box So I've started another thread. Hope you all find it.

So you have all age groups racing in the same event mad?

Our girls 50m free only has 15-20 per age group.

The 14/u raced SC last week and this week is 15, 16, 17&O (LC) so max this weekend was 60 swimmers + disability.

The first week was long distance (all ages) and some relays as well as 400m (free and IM) for 14/u. (This was LC where this weeks comp is)

The 14/U was hopefully going to be LC but the boom still isn't fixed at the pool. But it's usually SC at another pool we aren't using anymore!

Seems daft to have qualification times but no consideration times.

You do have to be careful with session timings if you have very relaxed consideration times though - slower swimmers mean that you have to have less heats, and younger / less experienced swimmers generally mean you allow slightly more time between heats to ensure that marshalling runs smoothly. You can’t afford to overrun on sessions (we would lose our accreditation if that happened).

I've caught up on the thread, although I skim-read some of it.

You've all been wonderful and so supportive and positive. Last week, everything was new and we didn't know what to expect and it was horrible watching DS from outside the centre. He looks so little compared with everyone else and we had to grit our teeth and not show him how we were feeling! I got imposter syndrome on his behalf when I saw him lose half a length in his relay race. But this week, his dad and I are feeling hugely better. The mum who I spoke to last week outside the pool is a little more clued-up and she messaged me their expected times and actual times (they did better than expected). The secretary confirmed to me that DS was entered to give him the experience and wasn't expected to be fast.

DS himself was really chuffed to have participated and has been very positive about the race today. We're all in good spirits and there is no imposter syndrome this week. He also won Man of the Match at football yesterday, after saving four goals, so we're on a high from that!

I've enjoyed reading through the last few pages of this thread. It's lovely reading about the experiences of others and all the positive aspects of competitive swimming!

@TheAbbotOfUnreason

Seems daft to have qualification times but no consideration times.

You do have to be careful with session timings if you have very relaxed consideration times though - slower swimmers mean that you have to have less heats, and younger / less experienced swimmers generally mean you allow slightly more time between heats to ensure that marshalling runs smoothly. You can’t afford to overrun on sessions (we would lose our accreditation if that happened).

Yeah. But we are a big county so we are talking seconds! They still very much limited the 200m fly and the LD events by numbers.

We actually had the warm up pushed back half an hour yesterday due to lower numbers and quicker heats than expected!

So how does it work in other Counties (I'm sure we do the same thing for Regionals too)?

All swimmers are ranked by speed so the 8 slowest compete against each other etc. and each heat gets faster. By the last couple of heats you will invariably have 1 or 2 14 year olds against a 3 or 4 15 year olds and some 16 and 17 year olds. Finals are done at the end of the session (and positions often change).

We only do heat declared winners for the long races.

If there are fewer than 8 swimmers in an age group they get pulled from the main event and they go straight to finals.

It still involves a lot of hanging about it isn't uncommon for a swimmer coming 8th to plead with their parents to skip a final.

We have had heats where there's less than 8 and they've all gone through to final but they do race the heat!

We only have finals for 50/100's. All 200m races and longer and all multi class classification is HDW.

I'm sure at regionals it's the same here. (SE)

Helen that's fab! Honestly at his age all the care about is they are enjoying it and applying themselves in training. They won't know what their specialist event is until around 13-15yo.
Coaches are looking for coachable swimmers - basically those who listen and can apply corrections in training and races. The rest comes later as part of the process.

Our heats are also ranked by entry time. Usually the last 3 are spearheaded.

Finals are age group.

Not that I'm trying to reinvent the wheel and I'm new to counties so there may be some reason this doesn't happen I dont know about but as you can rank swimmers in a county by event and age why not just say at a certain cut off date we are taking the top 20 (for example) of each event, age and gender. That way all the events would have the maximum number of participants and it would account for some years being a good/bad year for times if that makes sense.

Yeah. But we are a big county so we are talking seconds! They still very much limited the 200m fly and the LD events by numbers

We were a huge area too - people coming in by plane and ferry!

The 200m Fly and the distance events are always the ones to be limited - one extra heat of a 1500m will take at least 20 minutes, which is a big chunk of your session (which has a limited time).

All swimmers are ranked by speed so the 8 slowest compete against each other etc. and each heat gets faster. By the last couple of heats you will invariably have 1 or 2 14 year olds against a 3 or 4 15 year olds and some 16 and 17 year olds.

Our districts are swum in 12, 13, 14, 15/16, 17 and over age groups (we don’t mix the age groups), 200s and longer are timed finals.

Heats should be seeded on entry times, with the fastest three heats circle seeded. So for 50m - 200 m events the fastest swimmer goes in the last heat, the second fastest swimmer in the second to last heat, the third fastest swimmer in the third to last heat, then the fourth fastest swimmer goes in the last heat etc. You only circle seed the last two heats in 400m+ events.

We have had heats where there's less than 8 and they've all gone through to final but they do race the heat!

That might be because someone has been scratched at the last minute - you would normally swim it as a final in the finals session.

That might be because someone has been scratched at the last minute - you would normally swim it as a final in the finals session.

For our younger age group it's because the entries were low. It was only 2 events - the 100 and 200 fly!

I'm intrigued what county you are in. We have people flying in and ferrying in from channel isles and IOW!

And the 200m fly was HDW!

If it was a low number of entries you’d normally just go straight to finals with no heats.

Scotland - hence we don’t have counties / regionals, with have districts and nationals.

Well that's counties over for ds.

I'm not sure he could have done any better!

Today 100m fly, 8s pb and 400m free 8s pb and county champion in both

@itsgettingweird that's fantastic mini weird well done 👏

DS is feeling a bit flat after this weekends gala with a lot of his friends making huge PBs and he only got 3 out of 9 PBs and then only by a fraction. We have had the swimming is an individual journey and everyone progresses at different rates chat but I'm not sure it helped that much

Our counties are very much like AbbotOfUnreason in that all events are swum in age groups. Also from our competition conditions (save me typing it!)
(e) There will be a final for all ages and events with the exception of the 200m & 400m Events for swimmers under 14 years which will be Heat Declared Winner. The 800m & 1500m Freestyle events will be Heat Declared Winner for all age groups.

Ours are heat declared winner for 200m or over, heats and finals for 50s and 100s, with all doing heats and finals even if there are less than 8 entries in an age group (which was the case for most events for the 10/11 age group, despite entry times for all ages being relaxed compared to previously)

@Helenjohanna glad you are feeling more positive about it now, and that it was a good experience for your son, it sounds like he did really well

@Hellocatshome I guess the issue with that is the uncertainty for the swimmers, you could get just knocked out at the last minute. I think nationals works on top however many like that.

I hope you're all recovering from Counties.
With the easing of restrictions here, all the club galas are back. We have invites as a club for every weekend between now and Easter! And DD favourite gala is back too and it is so nice to see her excited for competition again.

I'm grateful for not needing to get up early this morning - but still woke at 6am (alarm set for 7!!!)

They did active recovery sets yesterday am and pm and then stretching in land training.

That was the end of their rest - straight into 20x200m threshold set this evening

We have a few things coming up. National camp at end of Feb, meet in wales in March and then regionals is end of April/beg of May.

Mid May is the test event at Sandwells and then mid June is junior para nationals.

Then it'll be British champs/ English nationals or both end of July/ beg of august.

I may then spend the month after recovering myself before season restarts in September 🤣🤣🤯

We’ve still got 2 weekends of Counties to go here. Our last weekend is in March.

Good Luck bar for the remaining weeks.

We are very lucky here ds club are so supportive.

He has 3 hour exams twice a week for 11 weeks (Thursday and Friday) as he is doing a T level.

He usually swims Friday am and it's a kick set. His disability means his muscles spasm anyway and he can have movement breaks but he was worried a kick set would make things more difficult. He spoke to his coach and asked if he could switch that session and perhaps swim with the competitive squad (he's performance) or junior performance (he's senior) for the duration of the exam period.
He told his coach he really wanted to balance both and felt he could but felt this 1 session was a conflict of optimum performance in his exams but that dropping a session would affect his optimum performance in upcoming regionals.

His coach told him to switch to Friday evenings with national squad as they do speed and technique and he'd really benefit from that and to continue to swim that session after his exams. He's also said he's going to start putting him in the national performance lanes when they do joint training to push him (their sets are the same but quicker times).

As a parent it's so nice to be able to know they have every swimmers best interests at heart and will fit their swimming around their education and needs - rather than expect them at set sessions and threaten moving squads when they can't comply to attendance for valid reasons.

This is a fairly new move for us and I'm impressed so far

@itsgettingweird that's brilliant, I know our club used to be known for being quite brutal and expecting kids taking exams not to miss any sessions but we have a new head coach now and some things have already started to change so maybe this will as well. I've plenty if time to find out though DS is only 11. First weekend of our counties this weekend. DS has only qualified for 1 race and is quite downhearted so I'm planning to do some fun family stuff on the days he's not swimming.

Good luck to day at counties hello. Qualifying for anything is fantastic and your ds should be proud.

Good luck to everyone swimming today, especially the ones competing at their first Counties. Do not stress if there are no PB's. Times were all over the place at ours.

DS's race in the counties is tomorrow, we watched the life stream and cheered on his friends racing today, it seems to have settled his nerves as he said "its just like a normal gala" I'm not sure what he was expecting

On another subject can I ask a potentially silly question abiut swimming and braces? DS will need braces wenare just waiting on the incredibly long NHS waiting list. His teeth are the same as his brothers so I think it will be removable braces followed by train tracks. Can you swim with the removable braces in? I've never had them and DS1 wasn't a swimmer? Will he be able to use his snorkel? Or should he take them out for swimming but then that might be too much time out each day to be effective?

Hello. Good luck to ds and hope it goes well for him today.

No idea about the braces but I'm sure the orthodontist can advise about these things.