Flashes of Panic

The team is getting wound up for next weekend’s meet. After distance day we lead club scoring by 25 points. (A curious quirk of the way U.S. Masters Swimming is subdivided is that “New England Masters” is its own massive club, with an internal “workout group” competition; everyone outside “New England,” which includes Connecticut, Maine, and at least one New Hampshire club, competes with each other.) I gather that there are more swimmers coming down for this meet than we’ve sent for years, and since masters swimming scoring rewards a lot of “splashes” as much as quality performances, high turnout is the first step to a winning score total.

Today we got proposed relay lineups. I’m in a mixed sprint relay on Friday night, and alternate for two more on Saturday. Unlike the meters meet in December, relay age groups here are not based on the sum of ages, but instead are determined by the age of the youngest swimmer in your relay. The trick is to assemble the youngest relay you can while staying above a particular age-group break point. If you’re 70, you can swim on any relay; if you’re my age, you can only swim on 18+ or 25+ relays.

It felt a little to me as though the lineups were drawn by a score-optimizing algorithm, though, the sort of program that never rests its key players. I wonder if I won’t wind up swimming at least one of my “alternate” slots on Saturday, and maybe picking up another one on Sunday, when the all-stars start wearing out.

Update, 3/21: Plenty of people, apparently, were unhappy with yesterday’s draft. Another round came out today; among other changes, I was promoted from alternate on the short MR. The wording of this email implies that while there are 40 relays proposed, they expect as much as 25% “shrinkage.” I expect there will be a lot of relay re-alignment on deck this weekend.

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