Archive for December, 2006

Palm Beach Sub-JO – 2/17/2007 to 2/18/2007

Sunday, December 31st, 2006
Session Report

Session: 1 8 & Under
Day of Meet: 1 Starts at 08:30 AM Heat Interval: 15 Seconds / Back +15 Seconds

1 Girls 8 & Under 100 Medley Relay
2 Boys 8 & Under 100 Medley Relay
3 Girls 6 & Under 25 Freestyle
4 Boys 6 & Under 25 Freestyle
5 Girls 7-8 25 Freestyle
6 Boys 7-8 25 Freestyle
7 Girls 8 & Under 50 Freestyle
8 Boys 8 & Under 50 Freestyle
9 Girls 6 & Under 25 Backstroke
10 Boys 6 & Under 25 Backstroke
11 Girls 7-8 25 Backstroke
12 Boys 7-8 25 Backstroke
13 Girls 8 & Under 50 Backstroke
14 Boys 8 & Under 50 Backstroke
15 Girls 8 & Under 100 IM
16 Boys 8 & Under 100 IM
17 Girls 6 & Under 25 Breaststroke
18 Boys 6 & Under 25 Breaststroke
19 Girls 7-8 25 Breaststroke
20 Boys 7-8 25 Breaststroke
21 Girls 8 & Under 50 Breaststroke
22 Boys 8 & Under 50 Breaststroke
23 Girls 6 & Under 25 Butterfly
24 Boys 6 & Under 25 Butterfly
25 Girls 7-8 25 Butterfly
26 Boys 7-8 25 Butterfly
27 Girls 8 & Under 50 Butterfly
28 Boys 8 & Under 50 Butterfly
29 Girls 6 & Under 50 Freestyle
30 Boys 6 & Under 50 Freestyle
31 Girls 8 & Under 100 Freestyle
32 Boys 8 & Under 100 Freestyle
33 Girls 8 & Under 200 Freestyle Relay
34 Boys 8 & Under 200 Freestyle Relay

Session: 2 9 & Over
Day of Meet: 1 Starts at 12:00 PM Heat Interval: 15 Seconds / Back +15 Seconds

35 Girls 11-12 200 Medley Relay
36 Boys 11-12 200 Medley Relay
37 Girls 13 & Over 200 Medley Relay
38 Boys 13 & Over 200 Medley Relay
39 Girls 10 & Under 200 Freestyle
40 Boys 10 & Under 200 Freestyle
41 Girls 11-12 200 Freestyle
42 Boys 11-12 200 Freestyle
43 Girls 13 & Over 200 Freestyle
44 Boys 13 & Over 200 Freestyle
45 Girls 9-10 50 Breaststroke
46 Boys 9-10 50 Breaststroke
47 Girls 11-12 50 Breaststroke
48 Boys 11-12 50 Breaststroke
49 Girls 11 & Over 200 Breaststroke
50 Boys 11 & Over 200 Breaststroke
51 Girls 9-10 100 IM
52 Boys 9-10 100 IM
53 Girls 11-12 100 IM
54 Boys 11-12 100 IM
55 Girls 13 & Over 200 IM
56 Boys 13 & Over 200 IM
57 Girls 9-10 50 Freestyle
58 Boys 9-10 50 Freestyle
59 Girls 11-12 50 Freestyle
60 Boys 11-12 50 Freestyle
61 Girls 13 & Over 50 Freestyle
62 Boys 13 & Over 50 Freestyle
65 Girls 9-10 50 Butterfly
66 Boys 9-10 50 Butterfly
67 Girls 11-12 50 Butterfly
68 Boys 11-12 50 Butterfly
69 Girls 11 & Over 200 Butterfly
70 Boys 11 & Over 200 Butterfly
71 Girls 10 & Under 100 Backstroke
72 Boys 10 & Under 100 Backstroke
73 Girls 11-12 100 Backstroke
74 Boys 11-12 100 Backstroke
75 Girls 13 & Over 100 Backstroke
76 Boys 13 & Over 100 Backstroke
77 Girls 11 & Over 500 Freestyle
78 Boys 11 & Over 500 Freestyle

Session: 3 9 & Over
Day of Meet: 2 Starts at 08:30 AM Heat Interval: 15 Seconds / Back +15 Seconds

79 Girls 13 & Over 200 Freestyle Relay
80 Boys 13 & Over 200 Freestyle Relay
81 Girls 11-12 200 Freestyle Relay
82 Boys 11-12 200 Freestyle Relay
83 Girls 9-10 200 Freestyle Relay
84 Boys 9-10 200 Freestyle Relay
85 Girls 13 & Over 100 Freestyle
86 Boys 13 & Over 100 Freestyle
89 Girls 11-12 100 Freestyle
90 Boys 11-12 100 Freestyle
91 Girls 9-10 100 Freestyle
92 Boys 9-10 100 Freestyle
93 Girls 13 & Over 100 Breaststroke
94 Boys 13 & Over 100 Breaststroke
95 Girls 11-12 100 Breaststroke
96 Boys 11-12 100 Breaststroke
97 Girls 10 & Under 100 Breaststroke
98 Boys 10 & Under 100 Breaststroke
99 Girls 11 & Over 200 Backstroke
100 Boys 11 & Over 200 Backstroke
101 Girls 11-12 50 Backstroke
102 Boys 11-12 50 Backstroke
103 Girls 9-10 50 Backstroke
104 Boys 9-10 50 Backstroke
105 Girls 11 & Over 400 IM
106 Boys 11 & Over 400 IM
107 Girls 11-12 200 IM
108 Boys 11-12 200 IM
109 Girls 10 & Under 200 IM
110 Boys 10 & Under 200 IM
111 Girls 13 & Over 100 Butterfly
112 Boys 13 & Over 100 Butterfly
113 Girls 11-12 100 Butterfly
114 Boys 11-12 100 Butterfly
115 Girls 10 & Under 100 Butterfly
116 Boys 10 & Under 100 Butterfly
117 Girls 11 & Over 1650 Freestyle
118 Boys 11 & Over 1650 Freestyle

Palm Beach County Spring Sub-Jo, February 17 & 18, 2007

Sunday, December 31st, 2006

Sanctioned By:
USA Swimming and Florida Gold Coast Swimming Association – Sanction #021707
PC10

Sponsored By:
Aqua Crest Swim Team

Location:
Aqua Crest Pool-2503 Seacrest Blvd., Delray Beach, FL- (561) 278-7341.

Directions:

From the South: I-95 North to Woolbright Road exit. Take Woolbright Road east to Seacrest Boulevard. Make a right on Seacrest Boulevard and go through three lights. The pool is on the left just after the third light.

From the North: I-95 South to Woolbright Road exit. Take Woolbright Road east to Seacrest Boulevard. Make a right on Seacrest Boulevard and go through three lights. The pool is on the left just after the third light.

Dates & Times:
Session 1 – Saturday, February 17, 2007. Warm-up at 7:30 AM Meet Start at 8:30 AM
Session 2 – Saturday, February 17, 2007. Warm-up at 11:00 AM Meet Starts at 12:00 PM
Session 3 – Sunday, February 18, 2007. Warm-up at 7:30 AM Meet Starts at 8:30 AM

Pool:
Competition will be Short Course Yards, 7 Lane course will be used.
Continuous warm-up and warm-down will be available. Daktronics timing system will be used.

Eligibility:
Open to all 2007 USA Swimming registered athletes residing in Palm Beach and Martin
Counties and foreign athletes with proper travel credentials that have been invited by USA Swimming, who have not achieved a Junior Olympic time in the event in which he/she is entered in.

Swimmers with a disability are welcome to eneter this meet. The coach or entry chairperson must alert the the meet director, as to the need for any special accommodations or seeding arrangements at the time the enrty is submitted.

Meet Referee:
Joe Ansell

Meet Director:
Glenn Meeder 561-313-9267 or gmeederjr@aol.com

Rules:
Current USA Swimming Rules and Florida Gold Coast rules will govern this meet. Safety rules as outlined as outlined by USA swimming and as recommended by the referee will be in effect.

THE FGC DECK ENTRY POLICY IS IN EFFECT FOR THIS MEET. THE POLICY CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.fgcswim.org/

Entry Deadline:
All entries must be received by Friday, February 9, 2007.

Please submit electronically by email to nzdaw@yahoo.co.nz using an appropriate Hy-Tek attachment. Confirmation for electronic entries will be sent via e-mail. If you don’t receive a
confirmation for your electronic entries in 24 hours, please call David Wright at 561-703-2858.

A TMII meet events file will be e-mailed to all of the Palm Beach and Martin County FGC registered clubs and can also be found at http://aquacrestswimteam.blogspot.com/
for teams using TMII.

Errors in entries submitted electronically are the responsibility of the applicant. Submission of electronic entries certifies that all swimmers entered in the meet are USA Registered.

Entry Fees:
$2.00 per individual event and $4.00 per relay. Non Electronic entries double. $2.00 swimmer surcharge.

Seeding:
YLS Multi course seeding wll be used for this Meet. All events are timed finals.

Awards: Individual Events:
1st-8th Ribbons

Relay Events: 1st-3rd Ribbons

Events which are listed 11 & Over will be awarded separately – 11-12 / 13-14/ 15 & over

Events which are listed 13 & Over will be awarded separately – 13-14/ 15 & over

Concessions:
Refreshments/Hospitality for coaches, officials, and meet volunteers available the entire meet

Admission:
$2.00 Each session

Heat Sheets:
$2.00

Meet Information & Results:
Psyche Sheets and Time Lines, and official results will be e-mailed to each participating club and will be posted at http://aquacrestswimteam.blogspot.com

Not Every Revolutionary Situation Leads To Revolution

Thursday, December 28th, 2006
By David
Scott at Timed Finals recently discussed how we could better promote the sport of swimming. At the risk of over abbreviating his argument, here is a summary. The full article drew a lot of responses, including one from Gary Hall Jr.

“I mean seriously, does anyone care about this sport? While “mainstream” media hounds Britney Spears as she neglects her child, swimmers and swimming sit here doing what we always do – get up early, go to bed early and be model citizens.

But in defense of the public not caring, we are boring, aren’t we? The biggest news of the year in the eyes of the public? Ian Thorpe retiring. Someone leaving the sport dwarfs everything else. Seriously, no other story in swimming came close?

Call me what you want, but it is time we take stock and figure out how we can take this sport mainstream.”

Amen. You can say that again.

One of swimming’s problems is its overwhelming niceness. I once coached a swimmer who was moderately rebellious. Every time Toni said anything controversial I’d get a frantic phone call from Swimming New Zealand suggesting a program of media training. She didn’t need media training. She handled the media better than they did. It was the message they didn’t like and wanted to control.

There is nothing wrong with niceness. It’s just not very interesting. A fair number of today’s best swimmers have been media trained into oblivion. Every question is answered with a well rehearsed phrase. You know the sort of thing, “I just wanted to do my best,” or “Coming first was such a surprise,” or “I owe it all to my coach or the timekeepers or the referee.”

New Zealand is a classic. No one says anything anymore. A few years ago when the “rebellious” Toni was competing, the national television channel in New Zealand used to call regional swimming championships to find out if Toni had entered. If she was, they would have cameras set up to cover the meet for the 6.00pm national news.

Toni was sponsored by a local strip club. Public interest in that was sufficiently high it was one of the leading stories in USA Today and Japanese deep-sea fishermen visiting New Zealand would get into taxis and ask to be taken to the club that sponsors “that Olympic swimmer”.

Rhi Jeffrey has just started training here and contributing to Swimwatch. She’s refreshingly direct. And long may it last. I suspect it’s one of the qualities that made her good in the past and will do so again. I bet there are plenty out there who would love to see it beaten out of her. A local Florida reporter called me the other day to arrange an interview with Rhi and among the questions she asked me was, “Will you be able to control her?” Good God woman, that’s the last thing I’d ever want to do.

Swimmers like Rhi are good for swimming. John McEnroe, Dennis Connor, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Connors, Terrell Owens didn’t promote their sports by being nice. They promoted it with a quality called personality. So when swimming has personalities; when Sabir Mohammed ripples his fantastic abs and sends World Cup crowds wild, when Mark Foster wants to do a few weights and drink an Australian beer with his name on the can, when Gary Hall wears his flashy dressing gown, don’t be too quick to rush to judgment. Don’t do a “Craig Lord”.

Gary Hall Jr., robed and ready

Take heart though, the signs are good; you are already being fairly rebellious – you’ve just read SwimWatch.

What A Tanged Web We Weave…

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006
By David

This week New Zealand’s largest Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Star Times reported that:

“New Zealand’s top swimmers have been short- changed after a row between Swimming New Zealand and government sport funding agency Sparc. Administrators from both organizations are at loggerheads over performance enhancement grants which are the livelihood of many top Kiwi athletes. It appears a misunderstanding has left swimmers out of pocket and, in some cases, struggling to make ends meet.

The problem was caused by Sparc changing the criteria for awarding grants. If athletes perform well in pinnacle events they qualify for more funding. Sparc and Swimming NZ initially agreed the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne would be swimming’s “pinnacle” event of the year. But Sparc decided the world short-course championships about 10 weeks later would be used as the grant benchmark. The ill feeling ramped up several notches when many of their grants in the following months were considerably smaller than had been budgeted for.

“We trained and trained for the (Commonwealth) Games. That was what we peaked for so we were all pretty flat at our next meet, which as it turned out, was much more important than anyone realized,” one swimmer said.”

The whole sad episode is typical of New Zealand’s Cameron led swimming. Here’s the things that stand out to us.

Only Swimming New Zealand and Sparc would agree to the Commonwealth Games being a “pinnacle event”. Sure, it’s a hard meet to win; the Australians and the Brits swim there. However, getting through to a final is a far less difficult task. For depth, the Woman’s NCAA finals being held the same weekend in the USA would leave the Commonwealth Games for dead. Swimming New Zealand wanted an easy meet to be the basis on which they were judged, and that’s dishonest. Honest people provided Sparc with honest tax dollars to support honest world class sport. Selecting the Commonwealth Games as a measure shows no respect for the nation’s investment or the integrity of those in charge.

Fortunately, it seems that someone at Sparc realized the deception and moved the “test” to the World Short Course Championships. That was the proper thing to do. We will never know whether the change was prompted by the realization that Swimming New Zealand had conned them, or whether it was a genuine effort to measure world class performance. I suspect Sparc probably caught on to the North Auckland sting. No one likes being “done like a dinner”, not even Sparc.

The best part of all this is the quote from one of New Zealand’s “elite” swimmers. It is typical of what they are learning in the era of Jan Cameron’s leadership; any excuse will do. “We trained and trained for the Commonwealth Games so we were pretty flat for our next meet.” Your next meet, whoever you are, was the World Championships. What on God’s earth are you doing going to a World Championships, representing a proud little country, feeling “pretty flat”. Why is it only now, when it has cost you money, that you realize the World Championships are pretty important? The fault of course lies in those who lead whoever said this. To Cameron and the beurocrats in Wellington, is this quote what you have brought the sport of swimming to in New Zealand?

Whoever said this need to be told, “If you went to a World Championships, feeling pretty flat, not realizing it was an important event and admit that to us now, I’m afraid you do not deserve to be funded, you have not earned that money. And those who taught you all this should resign.”

Does ESPN Really Know Sports?

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
By Rhi
They’ve finally done it. ESPN has made my “list”. Not too long ago, they published an article entitled “Boxing’s Knockout Punch”. Along with it is a list of sports that ESPN ranked in difficulty using endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination, and analytic aptitude as its standards. In it, swimming is ranked 36th and 45th in distance and sprint respectively. Ahead of swimming are sports like squash, fencing, team handball, diving, and baseball. Now if that’s not enough to put ESPN on every swimmer’s “list,” what is?

ESPN’s list has even been a hot topic on Facebook. There is a group titled “F*** ESPN, Swimming is the Hardest Sport There Is”. In it, there has been talk on the discussion boards that ESPN’s decision is justified! Someone actually argued that baseball is harder than swimming. He said he could easily get in a swimming pool and get into decent competitive shape but swimmers could not hit a baseball; please! The biggest problem is people think “swimming” is getting into a pool and doing a 500 yard easy swim. I don’t think so!

Referring to the standards ESPN used for their ranking system, let’s take a look at why they put swimming 36th and 45th. This is what someone in Facebook said about swimming’s ranking.

“To be fair, swimming does not take that much extra skill other than personal determination. It takes lots of heavy conditioning for long periods of time. It took me about an hour (I think it was actually about 45 minutes) to swim an open water mile freestyle and I don’t even know the other strokes.

This was without any training whatsoever. It wouldn’t be that hard to learn the basics, and just keep practicing. Although it is a rigorous sport, it does lack in some of the other areas in which the rankings were based. There is no Analytic Aptitude involved at all, Hand Eye Coordination is low, Nerve is basically absent (unless you’re hydrophobic), Agility is rarely an issue, Flexibility is not as important, and the Durability is also less important. (On the Durability comment, this is not to infer easy practices because god knows swim practices are hard, it simply refers to the fact that swimming is a low impact sport so it doesn’t take the same physical toll as others.)

The rest is all there though. Distance swimming is based on: Endurance, Strength, Power, Speed, and hand eye coordination to get off the blocks to start. Sprint swimming takes even less in that it doesn’t require as much Endurance. It is strictly a Strength, Power, Speed sport which leaves it severely lacking in points over the others which were ranked.”

Now, if no one sees a problem with this, get to an eye doctor immediately. Let’s go over each category, shall we?

Endurance is listed on ESPN as “the ability to continue to perform a skill or action for long periods of time.” All of you out there that have had practices that you just wish would end, know that swimming is an endurance based sport. I think swimming stroke after stroke for four hours constitutes performing an action continuously for long periods of time. What is this guy talking about?

Strength is listed as the ability to produce force. In order to get through the water efficiently you need to produce force in your pull and kick. At least this bloke gave us strength.

Power is the ability to produce strength in the shortest possible time. Have you ever heard a swimmer be happy about doing slower times at a meet? Enough said.

The Facebook bugger says that flexibility is not important. Tell that to swim programs that stretch every day and incorporate yoga into their programs. Plus, the more flexible you are in swimming the less injuries you will incur.

And nerve is basically absent? See this guy try telling that to me before my finals swim at the US Olympic trials, or any swimmer before their championship race. A special doctor travels with US international teams just to keep people from getting too nervous. To prevent them staying up all night before their races vomiting.

No durability? ESPN listed durability as the ability to withstand physical punishment over a long period of time. After the first 12,000 I did with David, I wanted to get my shoulders sawed off because I thought it might relieve the pain. Sure, we do not get the living daylights beaten out of us by 250 pound men, but I think we are pretty durable athletes.

Analytic aptitude is the ability to evaluate and react appropriately to strategic solutions. Mr. Facebook says there is no analytic aptitude involved at all. Ask him if he knows how to strategically swim 200 freestyle, or 200 butterfly. He wouldn’t know the half of it. You swimmers out there that have passed people to win in the last length of a race know there is plenty of analytic aptitude involved in this sport.

The only things I agree with this guy on are hand-eye coordination and maybe agility. I mean, we do swim straight for a while before we have to flip turn, but the rest of this is total junk!

This is why ESPN is on my “list.” I’d like to see any of those fat “well dressed” ESPN sports r(w)ankers get in the pool and do one of our workouts. Don’t forget to have the ambulance on speed dial, idiots.