Post game suggestions from Michael Koscec:

2025 SUMMER GAMES

Proposals for Consideration

SWIMMING

 

Prepared by Michael Koscec

September 15, 2023

INTRODUCTION

The Ballantrae Summer Games are an outstanding event. There were approximately 700 participants and 200 volunteers in 2023. This impressive level of involvement demonstrates the strength and commitment of the Ballantrae community. That’s why Ballantrae is such a special and exceptional place to live.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this position paper is not in anyway to take away from the tireless work that the organizers and volunteers contributed. The objective is to build on this foundation of hard work and to make the 2025 Games even better especially as it relates to the swimming events.

BACKGROUND AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Most sports events at the Summer Games that I am familiar with seem to follow similar “guiding principles”. Specifically, each Condo fields a team in a particular event that will represent the Condo in that event. If there are more participants registered to play in an event than can be fielded, the Condo holds “play downs” to determine the final composition of the team that will represent the Condo.

Let me provide a couple of examples. There were more participants than required to make up the two teams that were going to compete in bocce. Play downs were held to select the best bocce players that were ultimately going to represent their respective Condos. This process yielded an A and B team for each Condo and resulted in a very exciting and very competitive tournament.

Let’s look at another example. In water volleyball two Condos had insufficient numbers of players to form a team. This was the opposite situation to bocce where there were more players than needed. In this case, in 2023, Condo 1 and Condo 3 were combined to make up a team. This was arranged ahead of time and with the consent of the two Condos.

Therefore, the guiding principles that can be gleaned from the above is that each Condo fields its own team or teams that are formed prior to the start of completion. The rules are clear:

1. Each Condo fields the same number of teams or the same number of individual competitors for an event. There is no “stacking” where one Condo has an advantage over another Condo by fielding more teams or more individuals than other Condos.
2. There is no cross pollination of competitors from one Condo to another. In other words teams are comprised of members from only their own Condo. And individual competitors only play for their own Condo. They don’t play for another Condo. The only exception to this guiding principle occurred as described above for water volleyball where two Condos were combined to make up one team.

 

SWIMMING

Based on my experience in 2023, swimming didn’t follow any guiding principles that seem to govern many other Summer Games sports events.

Here are some examples:

2. Organizers arbitrarily made up swimming relay teams. For example, when the first teams were formed, I noticed that two swimmers from Condo 4 were one relay team and a third Condo 4 swimmer was assigned to another relay team. Why separate swimmers from the same Condo if the Summer Games are a competition among the various Condos.
3. Condos 1, 2 and 3 fielded 6 swimmers for the 4-person relay team.
4. As a result swimmers were combined from different Condos to make up additional relay teams.
5. In the case of Condo 4 one of our swimmers missed our relay race. He showed up late and swam for another team.
6. In the individual events many swimmers competed against swimmers in other age categories, therefore their results depended solely on the timekeepers for their placement. Some results posted initially were inaccurate and had to be corrected. (or should have been)
7. Pairs of swimmers were called to compete in a race, but no information was given to the swimmers regarding the age category and Condo number of their competitor.
8. The swimming heats were rushed moving from one event to the next with no breaks. For example, as soon as the ladies individual races were completed, the relay races started immediately and then straight into the men’s individual races with no breaks in between. There was no need to rush because the swimming competition ended about an hour ahead of schedule.

Specific Administrative Issues

1. At registration swimmers were not asked to confirm their Condo number and age category.
2. Timekeepers were not always given the last name of the swimmers.

It seems that the reason swimming doesn’t appear to have any guard rails like other events is that swimming is a “timed” event: everything revolves around timekeeping and therefore is a bit of a free for all. I imagine this may also apply to similar “timed” events like walking and cycling. Regardless, this position paper deals specifically with swimming.

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

The following recommendations are being made in order to address the issues raised above and to improve the overall experience for the swimmers.

1. At time of registration, the person should confirm: the person’s name (obviously) but also their Condo number, age category and swimming events.
2. The timekeepers should be given a form showing the swimmer’s Condo number, last name, name of the event (crawl, breast stroke), age category and the lane number.
3. In the individual swimming competitions, every effort must to be made to ensure two swimmers are competing against each other from the same age category. When individual swimmers are called to compete, the official should confirm the age category with each swimmer and let the swimmer know the Condo number of their competitor.
4. Don’t rush. In the individual races, all the swimmers in a particular age category and event should be called to come forward in preparation for their race. This way the swimmers who are not racing the first heat are waiting together for their turn to race in the next heat. This will ensure that only swimmers in their respective age category are swimming against each other. Make sure that the timekeepers’ forms accurately reflect all the swimmers’ information for the race.
5. If a swimmer doesn’t have someone to race against, the swimmer should be asked if he/she wants someone to pace him/her. The pace swimmers would be asked to volunteer. The “solo” racers plus pacers should be held at the end so that the pacer does not have another race.
6. There are five Condos therefore there should only be 5 relay teams and not six or seven to accommodate all the swimmers. If a Condo has more than 4 swimmers for the relay than the Condo swimmers select their four best swimmers to make up the team. This shouldn’t be too difficult because at this stage knowledge of the strongest swimmers should be apparent.
7. Swimmers cannot swim for a Condo relay team except their own. If a Condo team is short a swimmer the team can decide that one of their members will swim twice. Alternatively, the team can choose a swimmer ahead of time to join their team from another Condo if the other swimmer agrees to join. The race organizers will not arbitrarily assign swimmers from one Condo to another if a Condo is short a swimmer.
8. If a Condo team cannot fill all four slots and they cannot find another swimmer or if no one on their team is willing to swim twice, then the Condo team will not compete.
9. There should be no particular order of swimming styles in the relay. For example if a team chooses to swim breast stroke second or third that’s okay. Additionally if a team chooses to have two swimmers swimming breaststroke and two front crawl that should be acceptable. As long as there is a minimum of one swimming style included the number and order should be up to the team. (In a normal swimming competition where all four swimming styles are included a specific order is followed. But this is not the case here since only two strokes are included.)
10. The schedule should build in a minimum of 5-10 minutes between events: Individual ladies: 5-10 minutes break, Relay: 5-10 minutes break, followed by the individual men.

 

CONCLUSION

These recommendations are being forwarded in an effort to streamline the overall swimming competition: to bring greater structure in running the races, to avoid mistakes, improve the accuracy of results, eliminate confusion and improve the overall experience for the swimmers.