Thursday 20 August 2015

Blog 2360: Arena League

Its that time of year where attention switches to the National Arena League. The club always wants to field its strongest possible teams into this competition, so please keep the following Saturdays free and be available for selection. It doesn't matter if you have 1 50m relay or 3 individuals and 3 relay swims. You are there to represent the club and every team member is as important as the next, as without that 1 swimmer doing 1 relay the others could not compete in that event and earn as many points as possible for the team.

The dates are

October 10th 2015
November 14th 2015
December 12th 2015

Swimmers are selected based upon their rankings times off the British Swimming database from short course swims done in the last 12 months. Initially the 4 individual swims (50m 11/under and 100m for all other age groups) are selected first. As swimmers are only allowed to do 2 individual races in their own age group excluding the IM swims the coach will select which 2 swims they will do, based on the best possible point scoring outcome from not only their swims but the second best swimmer in the event they are not selected for. Sometimes this means that a swimmer may well not get their best event in the benefit of the overall outcome for the team. Where there are less than 4 swimmers selected for individuals the quickest combination of swims based on the those initially selected and then added to from the 50m times of other swimmers in that age group are used to make up the relays. In the 11 and under 5 swimmers will be selected as, if someone falls ill on the night you cannot swim swimmers down an age group, this does not mean that all 5 swimmers will swim. As with all selections the best possible outcome for the team is the main consideration. Once all this has been done an initial list is drawn up and the coaches will speak to each other about who is on form and who is not, and make any adjustments as necessary. Those swimmers who do not show pride and support the club and each other will not be selected regardless of speed as the bad attitude will have an effect on the rest of the team. As with anything the Head Coaches selection is final.

I am currently starting the selection process as all in all it takes around 40 hours of work to complete per team. As we have competitions on the last weekend of September and the first weekend of October you will have upto and including the DX meet to earn your place on one of the teams, so make sure your entries are in for these events. This means that final team selections will be announced only 5 days before the competition so be ready to step up if selected.

We will let swimmers and parents know as soon as possible as to which team they are in. We have to wait for the league draw to tell us where we are swimming (probably Worcester for the A team lol).

Looking at the team we have a really strong team this season and could do exceptionally well in both leagues.

I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN