Poolside-Chat-parents-of-competitive-swimmers

[Glittertwins]

Hopefully this will work as we’re at 999 on the other!

Our county gala lost money last year so deffo they won’t want to reject people. The pool it is at is massively expensive to hire and they try to keep the entry fee le reasonable.

In fact you couldn’t run 24 per event over 3 weekends there without ending up bankrupt.

So events with one swimmer, how do they manage to run the gala? It makes no sense also because surely counties are a qualifier for regionals.

Ours is 24 for 50's only. Then 22, 20, 16, and just 12 for the distance events.

Also over 3 weekends.

Can't recall race cost off the top of my head but they also limit the spectator tickets (it was 220 per session at winter regionals). The spectator tickets were £4 a session.

It's not 24 per event. It's per age group in that event iyswim?

We have girls 10/11-14 in age and 15+ in youth and boys 10/11-15 in age and 16+ in youth. Plus para swimmers (usually 2-3 per event max but this year swim in their age/youth comp and points are published at the end).

So it'll be 100 per event for each sex for 50's and reduced for each longer distance.

I have no idea how they run it finance wise but I do know last year DS was 5th in the county for one event but didn't qualify for counties. In fact he qualified for 8 regional events but 1 County event thats how hard our counties are to get in to, or at least were last year. Maybe they just didn't factor in decreased times because of Covid or something.

It's not 24 per event. It's per age group in that event iyswim?

Even so it doesn’t seem much for 3 weekends. I guess we have 4 sessions per day but only over 2 weekends with at least as many swimmers. And last year they lost money.

I think the pool is particularly expensive though to hire.

I don't miss the days of 3 or 4 sessions a day at English galas. We have 2 sessions mostly in Ireland and only regional and national championships have 2 with finals. Those 3 session days are very long.
Regional SC winter championships are over here and not much on til late Jan and the start of the LC qualifying period. We have a shake up of LC nationals in Jul with a new age group national and a separate youth nationals which start 15+ so will be interesting to see how that goes.

It is quite a balancing act deciding how to allocate the number of heats across the events in a meet. Distance swims take up so much time in comparison to sprints, so they tend to be HDW and limited entries. At £10 per entry for the Scottish Open SC and the likely fees for hiring the Commie, you’re going to heavy on the sprints.

DD has a L3 to get times for events she doesn't normally do, then winter nationals.

I agree that the last couple of years have convinced me that county times are pretty arbitrary and are little measure of how good the swimmer is! It seemed a real shame last year to watch 10/11 boy finals that weren’t full for anything and a couple of finals with only one or two swimmers in (for 50m events too). Definitely not the way to encourage them to keep going post Covid. I do wonder if taking the top x number per event would be better than qualifying times, though I can see the downsides with that too

That's what ours is doing eccles. Top 24 etc for each event that are faster than a specific time. The consideration time is set at the slowest it can be to keep the session timings.

Our county qualifiers are known to be quite tough but sounds like some other counties are even tougher if you can't wailing when ranked 2nd!

I agree that it could deter those moving from grass roots to major comp level if they can't clear the first hurdle.

Our counties times have always been stupidly fast in quite a few events. They are faster than at least two other neighbouring counties and in some events, the QT is faster than the regional's SC time. This has been pointed out to them over a number of years but nothing has been done about them.

@Glittertwins that seems crazy that they are faster than regional times!

We’e a smaller county and not one of the ones with super fast times, but there are a few that look out of line with others, and they just don’t seem to have accounted for the youngest age groups not being where they were pre Covid. The approach of yours sounds sensible @itsgettingweird, and avoids things like girls having twice as many qualifiers as boys in some events which also seems to happen (in all ages, not just the youngest). To me, the county competition should be the fastest however many in the county rather than based on hitting an arbitrary time. And that it’s not a good experience for anyone to have finals that aren’t full.

Getting to counties made such a difference to my younger one this year, it really gave him confidence and he has improved massively as a result. It would be such a shame if others who just miss the times don’t get that effect and end up discouraged. I don’t know if other counties are similar this year with the younger ones, or if ours have got it wrong on the times?

We have another 3 L3 galas before xmas, though DS has already got the times he needs (unlikely to make anyting he doesnt already have) for counties, so he's mainly there for the xmas tunes and festive medals (fingers crossed!). He still likes a medal 🤗

Right now, barely any 11/unders have made the full QT and not a full complement have got the consideration time so there will be hardly any swimming in that age group.
In another age group higher up, not one has got the full QT. The only person who sort of "has" is DS but that's because it is the first split of another distance threat gives him that time not that he can use the split anyway. He still needs to swim the actual event.

Absolutely agree Eccles my ds did his first counties etc this year he was on classified last October.

I truly believe that it's going through counties and regionals that prepared him for British this summer. It was the first time para swimmers race separately and have finals but he came up experiencing each level of comp.

Counties needs to include so many more swimmers to give them that experience of racing heats and finals.

Counties are the gateway to further competition. Swimmers need to have a realistic goal in meeting times otherwise they're going to be put off the sport entirely.
Covid has ruined kids' participation in indoor sports. The entry times need to be realistic to reflect the time lost on teaching technique and getting the core fitness back.

My teeny tiny 10 yr old (who looks 8!) has a December birthday. So despite being the smallest 10yr old in the squad, in just a few weeks time he'll have to meet 12 and under times to qualify for counties. So far, he's meeting all the 11/u times but none of the 12/u. And it's not looking likely he'll meet any. It's so demoralising! Wish there was a slightly fairer way of dividing up the ages as he'll likely not meet county or regional times til he's 16+

@Freeeezing - he could grow and meet those times as well as perfecting technique - it's the best to do that. My DS was tiny in comparison to many in that age group too but he's doing well now. Still relatively shorter than most but is still growing a bit each month.

It might happen sooner than you think. My DS is small for his age and his coach always says the small kids perfect their technique a lot sooner as they have to rely on that to keep up rather than just their size.

I completely agree with you both on the times, things like qualifying for counties can affect how coaches perceive them and squad progressions too. Counties really need to look at how many are qualifying in each event more closely if they want to encourage swimmers to keep going.

@Freeeezing my eldest would emphasise, he is a late October and would have all the times if he had been born a few weeks later. I think it’s made him push himself more to try and get them. It’s not all size though and hopefully it will come for your son in time.

I think the issue with set numbers is you’d end up with lower qualifying times for older age groups.

i’m happy with our times system, but they need to be sensible. I think ours is very much concentrated on the sprints though, the long distance events the times are very hard to get times for.

I used to balance the number of girls and boys in meets to make it fair in terms of % entries cut and ensuring that neither sex had a bunch of slower swimmers. We often had at least twice the number of girls entering than boys, especially in younger age groups, so the girls’ events generally had more heats than the boys’.

Can also empathise with difficult birthdays - DS always had Scottish National Age Groups as a target meet, but it was age on the day in April and DS has a March birthday. They tinkered with the 15 / 16 / 17 age groups when he reached that age - he was 15 when it was a 15/16 age group and the following year they made it a 16/17 age group.

Whereas as much as our counties hard to get into (12 per age per sex for long distance) the consideration times are easy.

Hence now me and another mum are trying to scratch about - what feels like 10 hundred swimmers - from our distance meet in a few weeks - because we have loads of entries and many are no time.

It was first come first serve as well so we have to accept them! (If space)

First come first served is really difficult to manage. I’ve only done it for 8s - 11s over shorter distances (whole team accepted as long as there is space). Lots of fiddling to get as many teams / swimmers in as you can.

With NTs over longer distances you have no idea how fast / slow they are. I’d go back to club coaches and ask for training times for accepted swimmers for seeding and working out session times.

For next time, I’d say no NT entries and training times are acceptable.