Poolside chat - new year, new racing!

[Glittertwins]

Hope this works, am rubbish at this!

He is a young youth @itsgettingweird

Right ... here goes ....

If he's in the 15yr age group you'll see the target number of swims for each distance.

If a swimmer has an automatic time they'll be accepted. Then they will take consideration times (fastest first) up until the total number target swims in that event. For this it'll be either 15yo or 16 and over.

Once that's complete they may take additional swims for the who,e age group 15 and over up to the total target number of swims.

So you'll need to do some maths (easier if your swimmer is 15 yo!)
You can look at the rankings for the age group in the region to see where abouts they are ranked and if they are likely to get in with a consideration time. For example where a target number of entries is 30 - if your swimmer has a consideration time and is ranked 21st they are likely to swim. If they are ranked 31st they have a chance. The further away they are from the number of accepted swims in the rankings above the target swims the less chance of swimming.

What I haven't looked at in detail is rankings compared to consideration times compared to number of swims. But I can tell you my 19yo has a consideration time for 800m free and is ranked 80 something in the region (🤣) and so it may be quite misleading to have a consideration qualifying time.

That's my understanding. Although my swimmer is a para swimmer so I don't get too involved in AB qualifying conditions because they don't apply to us!

Goodness that would drive me barmy trying to work that out. I must prefer my regions technique of enter, cross your fingers and read the rejected entries list through your fingers.

This is new for this year.

I've never really paid attention as it didn't apply to us and ds has never had AB consideration times before.

But I'm pretty sure previously it's been number of entries. Auto qualifying and consideration times to fill left over spaces.

As mentioned above even with actual consideration times ds won't be anywhere near close to getting in as an AB swimmer. He'll be fine as a para.

I'm not sure I can work it out, even though i think i understand. Just.

SE must be quite densely populated to have those rules then.
There are 30 entries max for a 15 yr old swimming a 50m event.
If 25 enter, having the consideration time they will be successfully entered.
If 31 enter, all having the consideration time, then the one in 31st place will be cut.

For each different distance, the number of entries is different so look at the rankings to see whereabouts he is in region.
That said, not all entries are necessarily taken up so if he has the time, do the entry.

Think SE is the largest region from what I understand.

Big clubs too? Wycombe down to Portsmouth/Winchester way

Which area does London count as (we're way off this but trying to learn in advance!)

I believe London counts as its own region.

List of English regions should be on the picture

Thank you!! Ok, there seem to be loads of children so I imagine London is prob fairly competitive! I grew out down south (faaaar south) so only about 20 children in the whole area 😂

Out of interest I thought I'd see what SW does (since it is still on my Meet Mobile). Ours are all over the place:

Male 50m Fly

15 year olds (45 swimmers)
16 year olds (56 swimmers)
17 year olds (15 swimmers)
18+ (42 swimmers)

Women 50m breast

15 year olds (42 swimmers)
16 year olds (27 swimmers)
17 year olds (22 swimmers)
18+ (38 swimmers)

Women 50m free
15 year olds (36 swimmers)
16 year olds (22 swimmers)
17 year olds (28 swimmers)
18+ (39 swimmers)

Men 100m back
15 year olds (48 swimmers)
16 year olds (27 swimmers)
17 year olds (16 swimmers)
18+ (22 swimmers)

Female 800m 11+
11 (4 swimmers)
13 (5 swimmers)
14 (18 swimmers)
15 (7 swimmers)
16 (9 swimmers)
17 (6 swimmers)
18+ (12 swimmers)

For the first year we have consideration times this year but I cant find the amount of swimmers per event anywhere. I think it is after the back lash they got from having qualification times only at winter regionals then cutting a lot of kids.

We have auto and consideration times.

Auto means you're in. Consideration could be very hit and miss!

We don't have consideration times this year (as far as I know) for the first time since before covid, and they have made some of the qualification times really hard (think 0.5 second faster than last year's qualification time for 100 free or 50 back in some age groups). The upshot is that some kids who won Counties for their age group don't even qualify for Regionals. That just seems a bit wrong (to me, and others). Another parent did point out that it would be really easy to run Regionals without any swimmers though.

Ours just have qualifying times, no consideration ones. As far as I know they don’t generally have to reject entries other than on the long distance, and that is clear in the conditions that they have a maximum number of heats.

@Chaotica if the winners from counties aren’t getting the qualifying times, I can’t imagine they will have many entrants at regionals, unless there is one county that is a lot less competitive than the others in the region are.

That's what we're thinking, @Eccle80. There was a last minute change in some of the times needed for short course regionals last year, probably because of a similar issue.

Look out for an update when they realise how short on entries they are!

I know there is always a balance with not being oversubscribed, but you need enough to make it competitive, our counties last year had very few younger swimmers, resulting in finals which weren’t even full, and it doesn’t look great.
We also had short course regionals doing a second wave of entries with a slight time relaxation last year too

We have a tough county. If you make a county final you probably will qualify for regionals but still only consideration times as they've made the auto ones so tough!

National window opens this weekend! Can't believe that's come around already!

My son keeps complaining that we dont live in a different region.

I dont think nationals are on the cards on our house.

That's the hope!

Although they did run County sprint champs half empty one year - it was really tough on the swimmers who had qualified because they'd tended to qualify for most races and there was hardly any time for a break between them. The next year, the county times for that meet became super-relaxed because it was better to have more swimmers.