More poolside chat

[Glittertwins]

Just realised we’re a bit close to the end!

I think the “problem” is that fast lane is complete 25m in under 30 seconds.

When you can repeatedly do 50m in that time (steady 32) and there’s 6 in the lane there doesn’t become enough space to leave iyswim? Our local pool was split into 3 lanes and public and the public half was quiet so ds moved out next to the fast lane rope and swam up and down there until the lane emptied.

No one complained about him catching up (even trying to go slow at ease he’s faster than some) but they did thank him for moving over a said he didn’t have to.

the biggest problem I find in public lane swimming is those who want to stake their claim and point rather than the uneven speeds and the speed of the “fast” lane not actually being fast if you’re an actual swimmer!

Like you said those who could wait to push off but don’t/ won’t!

Happy New Year all! I have a question on county times. I know each county is different though but want to hear your experience. Is it that if you do not meet the county consideration times you cannot enter at all even if it looks like they don’t have enough swimmers meeting the long course times so far?

That's correct. It wouldn't be fair to do it any other way once the QTs and CTs times are published, but is a shame when there isn't a full field of competitors and others could have had the opportunity to experience racing at the next level. It also lessens the value of DC's medal if they know going into the race that as long as don't DQ, they can have a terrible race and still place (when there are 3 or fewer qualifiers) - DD1 calls them participation or attendance medals!

DD1's age bracket for our county only has a couple of qualifying swimmers for 1 event, 2 other events have only 5/6 qualifiers, and at least 1 event only has 8 meaning provided the swimmers don't DQ, they'll automatically make the final (8 lane pool), which again lessens the achievement.
They toughened the times up for us this year, but it looks like they went a bit too far for some events! We only have consideration times so they could cull if necessary (which makes the harder times even more difficult to understand!), but they haven't rejected any swimmers since moving to this system after Covid. It's seems a bit strange to me to tighten times rather than use a perfectly legitimate cut off of maximum entrants which already exists in the meet conditions. A neighbouring Counties has tough QTs and reasonably generous consideration times, with the idea that they can backfill the spaces with the consideration times and always have a full number in each age band - I much prefer this but it does involve tempering of expectations for swimmers who've only just squeaked a consideration time and possibly some big disappointments if they don't make the cut across events.

In Somerset I’ve never known them reduce consideration/qualification times to scoop up extra swimmers (and I’ve probably had experience of a decade’s worth).

I’ve not checked this year’s schedule but I think they might have moved to Heat Declared Winners for the less popular races like 200m fly as some events were so undersubscribed. Certainly as DD hit her mid-teens we were more picky about which events to swim; timetabling could be horrid. The organisers have to assume that most eligible swimmers will enter, I suppose, as there is a finite amount of pool time.

Hopefully everybody’s pools and general weather will behave for Counties this year!

(Just BUCS LC for us in Feb and DD is delighted that some more of her old club friends are heading up to Sheffield too).

Thanks for sharing @skankingwombatand @madcats. All makes sense to me now

In our county I have known the times to be adjusted part way through the autumn once or twice if it looks like numbers are too low, but I suspect at this point after entries closed it would be too late to sort out (unless timescales are very different to ours). We only have finals for 50s and 100s, but it is always better to have to compete to get into the finals rather than being able to take it easy on the heats because there are so few.

i felt our region didn’t get winter regional times right this year - there were some events that the junior times seemed comparatively easy, and others where they didn’t end up with enough to fill finals.

Ours have auto and consideration times and a target number of
swimmers.
Most events will have some get in on CT but the number varies dependent on event.

Also the target number includes its swimmers so if you have 8 spaces for paras but only 4/5 swim more AB swimmers will get in on CT.

our county have been pretty good at predicting a times and getting AT and CT just right historically.

We only have QTs in our county but have been known to scratch entries if oversubscribed. I don’t recall them extending the scope though

Yep, no consideration time, no entry. Doesn’t stop some parents from doing it anyway which then caused hassle for multiple people in addressing refunds!

Surely the entry file prevents you from entering something you don’t have the time for?

On most/all(?) meet software you have to remember to tick some tucked away boxes to set this up.

The Comp Sec should also be able to “reject” ineligible entries before submitting the entry file (but perhaps it might not be as easy on some software as others)?

I think some systems do.

We use SCM and only eligible events (AT and CT) are available for selection.

DS has CT for freestyle but AT as a para and has to enter individually for para swimming rather than via the meets file.

But I think clubs and counties/ regions all do it differently?

Of course there is no consistency!!

I’m pretty sure for ours you can’t submit an entry where you don’t have the qualifying time, but it doesn’t surprise me there is no consistency!

Have all the other regions got times out for regionals? We’re still waiting for ours at a point we need to start doing entries for regional qualifier events.

South West came out in November.

South east was out in December but not sure when in December?!

only know because I just checked on back of your posts and times say V3 Dec 2025!

East Region came out in November IIRC. There have been significant tightenings on those too this year.

Thanks all, seems like ours are behind then. I’m sure a few years back they were out well before Christmas.

We’re heading towards counties now starting next weekend

I suspect some counties/regions are struggling to predict swimmers' progress to get the right balance of swimmer numbers post-post covid - no pool time meant standards had to be lowered after lockdowns, and now the younger cohorts are improving on each other year on year but still not quite to where they were before 2020; even the current 9yo swimmers will have been impacted by the pool closures at the very start of their swim journey.
I wonder if they are hoping to wait it out for the Counties results @Eccle80to ensure a fair number of qualifiers? Presumably nobody will want to enter regionals until those are over at the earliest any way, as much as it would be nice to know what you're aiming for at Counties as you dive in! Has your club heard rumours of changes to times or is it safe to expect broadly similar to 2025? We had unofficial advance warning of times tightening well before both CQTs and RQTs were released (not the figures, just the trend) so were able to temper expectations.

There has been a fair bit of variability year on year which I think you are right is a carry on from Covid effect. Particularly my DS who will be in the 15s this year it has always seemed like they don’t get his ages times right and then don’t have all that many entries - from what I have seen his age group was quite thin in the younger years as Covid maybe affected those who might have joined clubs but had later lesson stages disrupted, plus the age group above him is particularly strong in the region so if you judge times from the previous year you’d get relatively fewer from his.

I’m not worried about regional entries, but with regional qualifier meet entries open for March time, and knowing the popular ones of those fill up fast, it would help to know what events to target if we had times.

As a now (former) Club Comp Sec, I’d just ping an email to your equivalent if you don’t have parent reps or Whatsapp groups for squads. There has to be something going on in your region (unless they are always like this).

Meet entries aren’t cheap, so I can see the attraction of just working towards the QT events at 15.

I suppose I assume this, but you do know that you can get regional rankings by event online by age?

https://www.swimmingresults.org/12months/

DH would just say our regional people are incompetent. In his experience 🤐

I didn’t realise they weren’t out it’s ridiculous. Off my radar though as my two won’t swim them anyway

Madcats thank you, no they don’t know any more than I do. They do always seem to be the last region to issue times, and I know it was after Christmas last year, but I thought we had them by now. He should have the times in most of the events he’d want to swim at regionals, but there are a couple he’s just outside last year’s and it’s possible they could shift them a bit to better reflect his age group vs the one above.

Satisfiedwithanapple I think it would help if they at least communicated when they were expecting to have things out.

There’s a huge variation in when counties and regions publish times, close their events, and even run them.

Our counties starts this weekend and I’ve seen all over SM this weekend clubs saying how well swimmers have done getting last minute county times etc.

ours closed on 15th December!

Ours started last weekend!