Good morning, everyone!
One of the recent things to come to my attention has been questions regarding the league/conference championship meet, and how its location is decided.
Our league by-laws state that we rotate the location of the meet alphabetically every summer. On occasion, a team will decide to opt-out of hosting for various reasons. Transylvania never hosted, primarily due to it's distance from the other teams in the Tarheel Swim League. Others have declined due to facility issues, or even inexperience with running a large meet and wanting some time to see how it is done.
There have been discussions over the past years to keep the meet in Valdese and to work out some sort of hosting agreement where the host team still retains entry fees, while the Valdese Rec might charge a small facility charge per swimmer. This is not an uncommon arrangement for USA Swimming programs who rent out large facilities for their large meets. We do charge modest entry fees for the swims, mainly to cover the cost of awards and ribbons, and the money from those fees do help give each team a small infusion of capital every so many years. The fees currently stand at $1.50 for individual events and $4.00 per relay team entry. With each swimmer maxing out at 5 events (4 ind./1 relay, or 3 ind./2 relays), this means each swimmer contributes a maximum of $7 in entry fees, but when you add together all the swimmers who participate, it adds up. Before deducting costs on trophies, ribbons, and medals, Valdese took in just over $1,000 in 2014.
Other issues that have prevented a permanent location are concerns for local businesses who would potentially stand to lose money with the meet relocating permanently to Valdese. Local eateries, especially, benefit from the meets as the other teams don't have established kitchens and concessions as we do in the bowling area of the Valdese Rec. Two different eateries from Granite Falls will be setting up at their meet this year, and Forest City and McDowell have had several vendors benefit from their championship meets in years past. These businesses often help support the teams and are valuable relationships for the community. We want to support local business for all of our teams, not just out own. At the same time, the host team also gets the benefit of a percentage of the t-shirt sales from the
mobile t-shirt vendor, which could happen regardless of location.
The coaches and team representatives are also aware that the champs meet takes quite a long time on days that are particularly hot, and we have discussed various ways to try to make the meet run faster (see the recent purchase of the Colorado Timing System Dolphin timing equipment by both Forest City and Granite Falls). Other suggestions that have been floated are to separate the meet into sessions by age group, where the older swimmers (11+) swim in the morning, and then the younger swimmers swim in the afternoon. This would present some difficulties, especially in events where swimmers may be swimming up an age group across sessions, and it wouldn't solve the issue of a long day for families with swimmers who would be in both sessions. It certainly would cut down on already cramped lanes for warm-up, which is almost useless when trying to get 60+ swimmers in three lanes as we will have to do this coming Saturday. As the overall number of swimmers participating in the meet has declined in the last several years, there has also been a decreasing urgency to consider the split-session approach.
One of the biggest things that can help us move the meet along is consistency, and more the familiar swimmers, coaches, and volunteers are with the various roles each performs in order to make the meet possible. If we are constantly training new people year after year, it means we will find ourselves facing familiar problems. Just as in an employment situation, having workers who are experienced helps with efficiency. This isn't to say that we don't welcome first-time volunteers, as we certainly do, but it also means that having a strong, experienced group of volunteers who have performed their jobs (computer operators in scoring, timing system operators, starters, stroke and turn officials) can seriously impact the quality of the meet. This has been a big part of why our home meets have been able to go smoothly this summer, and hopefully that will help translate into a more efficiently run meet this coming Saturday. YOU ALL HAVE NO IDEA HOW THANKFUL I AM FOR YOUR VOLUNTEER HELP THIS YEAR!
Ultimately, as with most things, there are positive things that come out of our current system for the championship meet, and there are a few things worth considering to improve the meet quality for future events. The leadership of all the TSL teams have tried to preserve some of the benefits while also investing significantly in ways to improve the meet experience for everyone (for example, the Dolphin system with two watches for a six-lane pool costs in the neighborhood of $3,300, adoption of the Meet Mobile app, moving to timer sheets instead of cards, embracing more central training for officials, computer training). If you do have any suggestions on how to improve the meets, don't be shy. Let me know, and I will bring it to the League at our fall meeting for the consideration of everyone!
See everyone at practice tomorrow!
