We received this unsolicited article and decided to print it along with an opposing viewpoint. If you have an opinion regarding any aspect of masters swimming, send it to us at pvnewsletter@usms.org.
Point: Seeding Policy Woes
By Henry Mecredy, South Texas LMSC
For years I have objected to the way Masters meets are seeded.
The seeding method used in USMS arranges the swimmers in a heat so that there is a fast swimmer in the middle lane, with a slower swimmer on each side. Two still-slower swimmers are then placed in the next two outside lanes, and so on until the heat is full.
With this policy, swimmers of identical or very similar speed almost always end up separated from one another, with faster swimmers in between. This is because the seeding method creates heats that look like an arrowhead, with a point in the middle (the fastest swimmer in the heat) and the other swimmers trailing on each side like geese.
I attended a meet recently where four swimmers were seeded at 1:15 in the 100-yard IM. Because of the seeding method, two of them ended up on one side of the pool, another on the opposite side of the pool, and the fourth in a totally different heat! This phenomenon is quite common at Masters meets. Take a look at a heat sheet and you’ll see what I mean.
In my opinion, this seeding technique detracts from both the egalitarian principles of Masters swimming and from its pure excitement. First, there’s no sound reason consistent with USMS basic principles that some swimmers should systematically be given "good" lanes and others bad lanes. Second, only the fastest swimmer in each heat swims next to close competitors, while all the rest of the swimmers are separated from their peers. But swimming next to swimmers that are about your speed is fun and exciting, and it makes you swim fast! That’s a big part of what people get out of Masters competition, yet the seeding method makes it rare.
The existing seeding approach makes a limited amount of sense in "elimination"-style competition, where it originated. There, swimmers must qualify with a good time for advancement to finals, and there is a "top seed." But all Masters heats are timed finals: no one must qualify with a previous time to advance to a subsequent heat, and no one must qualify to enter a Masters meet. And in Masters, there is no single "top seed:" each age group has its own.
I believe that Masters meets should be seeded in a simple manner-almost boneheaded in its simplicity: the entries in an event should be arranged by time, then assigned to heats and lanes in groups of six (or eight, or however many lanes there are in the pool), simply spread across the pool from fast to slow. In a meet seeded this way, each swimmer would swim between the swimmers just faster and just slower than himself (or next to those with identical seed times). Obviously, as now, someone would have to swim in the wall lanes. There’s no totally equitable way to approach that problem, but meet directors could look for natural gaps in the seed times and break the heats up accordingly.
In my experience, this issue meets with a lot of resistance and misunderstanding when it is first presented to swimmers. I’ve seen this in personal discussion and on the USMS web site Discussion Forum. Unfortunately, I have also been met with a stone wall in trying to get the issue raised in SWIM Magazine (where it belongs) over the past year or so. However, I think it will make sense after a little reflection, and it is an important issue because of the impact it has on our experiences at meets. I urge swimmers to work through their representatives to get this policy changed, or at least make the alternate method optional. Also, I suggest discussion of the issue on the USMS Discussion Forum.
The views expressed here are strictly my own.
Counterpoint: Seeding Policy Woes
By Jeff Roddin
I read with interest Henry Mecredy’s article titled "Seeding Policy Woes." I agree with Henry that the current system can sometimes create poor conditions for close races when similarly seeded swimmers are on opposite sides of the pool. But I do not agree that his proposed method is a better substitute than the current system.
It is true that United States Masters Swimming (USMS) has a much different purpose than USA Swimming, NCAA swimming, high school and other youth dominated swimming organizations. USMS is indeed more about promoting lifelong health and fitness than about breaking records and promoting fierce competition. The fact that 90% of masters swimmers do not compete in meets coupled with the health/fitness goal concurs with Mr. Mecredy’s statement of the USMS egalitarian principles contrasting with the competitive spirit of the youth organizations. However, the USMS meets are put in place for the small percentage of masters swimmers who do wish to compete. If the USMS meets were about equity we would not give out awards, publish results, etc. And we would simply use workouts and "time trials" as a gauge for people’s times.
Mr. Mecredy points out it is not fair for some swimmers to be given "good" lanes while others are stuck in the "bad" lanes. I presume he is talking about being stuck in an end lane that may be more turbulent than a middle lane because of the wall. While this may be an injustice, all seeding methods will have this shortcoming unless each heat only has one swimmer or each heat keeps the end lanes open. The only solution to avoiding the problem of the same seeded people being stuck in the end lanes would be to have the computer randomly determine each heat. But I do not think people would accept this method. Therefore the proposed seeding method does not remedy this problem.
A claim of the proposed seeding method is that it creates more excitement because more swimmers of similar speed will be next to each other and therefore the races will allegedly be closer. I do not believe the proposed seeding system can accurately create this scenario because seed times are completely up to each individual swimmer. That is, the times do not necessarily reflect what the swimmer will do at that particular meet. Some swimmers enter times they have done recently, some enter best times from the previous year, some enter slow times so they can swim in "clear" water and some simply enter recent workout times (I will note that the current seeding system is no better than the proposed system in this regard for the same reason that seed times are inconsistent).
Theoretically Mr. Mecredy’s proposed system would improve the likelihood of closer races. But the vast majority of masters meets have time discrepancies between the swimmers that are so great that even being next to your closest seeded competitor does not mean your race will be close. Perhaps a densely seeded meet like USMS Nationals will have many swimmers close in time to one another. But most masters meets are local meets with low attendance. And USMS Nationals is arguably structured to produce a National Champion in each event/age group and it therefore much more similar to the youth organizations where the "arrow" method is preferred. Therefore using seed times as a sole basis to reconstruct a seeding system is not a good idea because the data you are working with is very inconsistent.
Ideally, yes, it would be great to line up the four swimmers in the 1:15 100 IM example. But to do this, as Mr. Mecredy suggests, would require the intervention of the Meet Director. A proposed solution was to have the Meet Director look for natural gaps and to break up the heats accordingly. I feel strongly that Meet Directors’ subjective decisions should be kept to an absolute minimum. Otherwise swimmers will indeed complain loud and clear when they disagree with the decision.
In addition to this likelihood of increased protests, we certainly do not need to add to the complexity of a Meet Director’s job. It is difficult enough to find volunteers to run a meet according to the USMS rules let alone find somebody to make subjective decisions and then expect everybody to abide by them without argument. We are now fortunate to have technology to seed meets and make meets run more smoothly. Let’s not take a step backward and revert to the old fashion, tedious method of seeding heats by hand.
In conclusion I agree that the current seeding system has its shortcomings and Mr. Mecredy’s proposed system alleviates some of these problems. But after weighing all the proposed system’s pros and cons I do not feel its advantages warrant making a radical change to our current seeding system.