Poolside-Chat-parents-of-competitive-swimmers

[Glittertwins]

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

Good luck @Teateaandmoretea !

Good luck tea

We have our Xmas party with swimming tonight followed by 5am training 🫣🤷‍♀️

Swim normally M-Th and then 2.5 hours F,Sa am and next W-Sa. then back normally from 3rd.

Our counties is over 3 weekends but there's a weekend fee in between each. Ds is all day Sunday the first weekend and sat/sun pm the last weekend. He's decided to only do 4 events.

Good luck today @Teateaandmoretea hope they get the times they want

We’re finished with county qualifying, my two ended up with 8 and 7 times which they are both pretty happy with. Youngest did end up managing to get the time where he was previously ranked 2nd in the county without qualifying, but missed others where he is 3rd and 6th fastest! Unless there are a lot of last minute times there will only be one full final for his age group which is a shame.

That's such an odd way to do it eccle

Ours take the top 22 for each age group for 50m then less per event as they get further distance down to 12 for 800/1500.

They have extremely easy qualifying times this year which I think is a shame because so many think they have a qualifying time but are ranked like 80th so won't get in. We previously had auto and consideration with an accepted number of swimmers.

They didn't actually publish any qualifying times for para swimmers but apparently they'll check the entry time against the standards for their classification 🤔

Ours is the same. We have QT (automatic entry) and consideration times where potentially those with the CT might not get to swim. For example there is only one swimmer who has the QT in an event. Second fastest is 3 seconds off it. They might not be allowed to swim if it's decided that the county don't want people just to make up numbers. Will have to wait and see what the list of entries has

@Eccle80 yours sounds like ours last year DS wa 5th on the county but didn't qualify for counties. And there were a few finals with 1 kid in them 🙈

I can see the arguments both ways, if the times are easy but lots get rejected as a result it’s disappointing (and presumably a lot of work for those organising), but if it is just fixed qualifying times and they misjudge it then it looks odd when you don’t fill finals. I had a look and almost half of the events for my youngest’s age have less than 3 qualified up to this weekend. I think both genders of the 11s and 12s have small numbers. It feels like the county should have reviewed the times a couple of months ago and made some adjustments, especially as it was predicable given not many 11 year olds qualified this year on relaxed times, then they put them back to normal.

Glittertwins you’d think with only one qualified they would want the next fastest to swim it if they had the consideration time on that system!

hellocatshome I think that’s a real shame, there isn’t much satisfaction for the swimmer in swimming the final alone. Is your county likely to be any better this year on numbers?

As I’ve said before I don’t understand how these counties pay for two weekend events with 3 swimmers in age group events. Ours made a loss last year with average entry times (and we are a big county). I think they deliberately didn’t make the times easier cos of Covid and the constant threat this time last year of it being cancelled. All the times were brought forward and this year more kids have the times/ they made it easier for the little ones.

We had a mixed weekend. Dd1 swam not at her best, Dd2 did really well. She also got 50 back yesterday, so she’s going to stick to swimming the 50’s she’s decided - she has 3 to do. Dd1 I need to somehow pep up over the next 5 weeks or counties won’t be fun. I think she needs feeding up/ to pay more attention to nutrition. Christmas is a good time for this I think.

@itsgettingweird surely that would lead to them having lower qualifying times for older age groups if there were fewer swimmers in one age group/ a particularly strong cohort? Unless they account for this.

I still think the most sensible way is to have reasonably challenging but achieveable QTs, stick with them and book enough pool time.

I think they can have qualifying times and consideration times so if you haven't enough swimmers meet the QTs then you move down to the fastest within the consideration times up to X numbers of swimmers.

That way it gives the organisers flexibility to increase numbers but still stick to X numbers of swimmers per event.

Just finished our winter nationals meet.
DD wasn't quite happy with her times in a couple of events but she did PB in one of her weaker events so I think it was a successful meet, coming away with a couple of medals and final swims in all events.

Looking forward to Xmas.

I do wonder about how it works financially, it is only the 11 and 12s that have very low numbers, but I think our club has less total qualifying times than last year, and I imagine others do too.

I’ve also wondered if this year with the cost of living crisis, people will be more selective about how many events they enter compared to previous years to try and keep the costs down.

@Teateaandmoretea well done to DD2, and hope DD1 is ok and can have some rest and good food over Christmas.

@Porseb well done to your DD too, sounds like amazing results

I'm wondering how ours is going to run since there will be no spectators yet again but an ever increasing entry fee.

So why are there no spectators again?

This time is because they have to change the starting end and they don't want to put the swimmers at the turn end but use the gallery instead. They've never had a problem with swimmers at the turn end before and there will be a heck of a lot more room. So we are expected to fork out almost as much as for nationals but not able to support our swimmers. Some of the younger one will have never had their parents being able to cheer them on so far, it's not fair on them at all.

So how much are your entry fees? Ours are 6.50 an event. It’s cheaper than most open meets. Maybe that’s the answer to my ‘how do they run with only 3 swimmers’ question……

£10 😬

😮Jeez

Yep, I've got two of them to fork out for as well

£10 😱

Wow, £10 an event and no spectators either?! That really is a shame, are they live streaming it? Though I know that isn’t the same as being there

I haven’t done the entries yet but I think ours is £6 or £6.50 an event

Ours is £7

Yes, it's live streamed and costs a small fortune but it's not the same for the real young ones who've never had a proper county champs with parents there. It's also crap for the parents as everyone has to drive there too - we'll all be hanging around in cars waiting for them and being charged for the council parking too!!

Our County Times are pretty generous and £6/race (norm seems to be about £7.50 now). The downside of the easy times is that County Champs run for 7 days (which is a right pain when our swimmers are an hour's drive away!).

Primarily because DD has GCSE's and music exams looming, we've really cut back on what we are entering this year. We are just hoping to get some LC practice for DD's Regional events.

Last year was unusual, but our club entry fees will be about double last year's. It is good to see lots of 10-12 year olds competing.

@itsgettingweird - just saw this announcement today about para-swimming

www.britishswimming.org/news/para-swimming-news/world-series-booked-return-ponds-forge-23/?fbclid=IwAR3mBMylbu3etot-A7KAnQRwxcryKLx0B3b3I9BZNp54ZAXgV-JIPxL4s

Thank you.

Ds is doing the national event part. He's going up with my dad as it's term time.

It's a big meet and a chance to domestically race some world swimmers if his times put him in heats with them.

Ds will just love 4 days meeting up with his para swimming mates from around the country