Mark Rauterkus
Sports Support Syndicate, Inc.
108 South 12th Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
WPIAL Meet, 1992
Memo @ WPIAL & PIAA Swimming
Dear Fellow Coaches,
Here are some suggestions that I’ve been considering. We all know
that there are many different ways to promote fast swimming. This
list of ideas is my way of sharing some thoughts with you, and I do
not intend to push for any one or all of these ideas at this time.
Let’s just talk about them.
1. There are too many meets and these meets take away from the more
valuable training time.
2. The Home and Away competition in meets could work if there were
only four teams per section.
Let’s double the number of sections in the WPIAL keeping the good
local rivalries alive.
Swim Section meets on Mondays, as scheduled by the WPIAL office, and
make Thursdays the day for schools to schedule meets as they so
desire.
3. Benefits Single-Sex meets:
Schedule boys meets on Mondays and girls meets on Thursday, giving
the other sex an opportunity to train instead of going to the meet.
As justification to allow more competitors, we could push for JV and
Varsity heats in big-school sections at single-sex meets.
Big school team should consider swimming against each other on the
same day with girls at one school and the boys at another with JV and
Varsity heats.
Single-sex Varsity only meets would allow teams to swim together for
a 80 minute warm-up/practice followed by the meet.
3. We need more championship meets. Let’s not be forced to swim all
of the late-season, dual meet schedule, and instead let’s hold
bigger, multi-team, seeded meets. I suggest:
WPIAL, Boys vs. Girls, Freshman Swim Off - January 2
Boys and Girls JV Section Championships - January 20
WPIAL Distance Classic with 800 Free Relay, 1000 Free, 400 IM - Feb.1
WPIAL 6-Dive Championships - Feb. 1
Boys and Girls Varsity Conference (8 schools) Championships - Feb 10
4. Coaches and officials need to be responsive to more
experimentation within the meet program.
At certain meets, let’s re-design the meet program and scratch some
events in favor of different event and let’s use multiple heats.
Include:
• 400 Medley Relay, 800 Free Relay
• 200 strokes, and 400 IM
• 100 IM, 25 strokes
• 1000 free with 2 swimmers per lane instead of the 500
• Freestyle only meets with multiple heats per event
(no Medley, IM, or stroke races)
• Stroke only meets with multiple heats per event
(no 50, 100, 200, 500 or free relays)
5. In swimming, it is wrong to ask swimmers to make a State
Qualifying time and place in the top 7 finishers. This is not the
Olympic Trials. This is not a season ending meet. Make a time
standard and stick to it. We are forcing kids to swim against each
other and coaches to out-think each other, when we all should be
racing against the clock.
Example: One team may want to train 4 or 6 swimmers for the same
event in one season. That team would be punished in the WPIALs as
they would knock each other out of going to states. But, they may all
be able to do the time!
Example: One swimmer wants to make finals at states and avoid the
shave and taper for the WPIAL meet. A WPIAL swimmer can not simply
achieve the time standard at WPIALs and go for a better performance
at States. A coach can be certain that a swimmer is going to hit a
certain time, but no coach can guarantee an athlete as to what his or
her final place will be and if a trip to states and shaving and
tapering is possible. Hence, all the WPIAL swimmers have to either
rest and shave to make states or worry about the final WPIAL place.
From what I’ve been told, the WPIAL swimmers who could be getting
seconds swims at states, don’t make many improvements at the PIAA
meet.
We should improve the time standard and send any and all swimmers
who make the PIAA cut-time advance to states, regardless of place. We
should make an objective, published, study of the time standards and
make recommendations based on a five-year average on each event,
perhaps taking the 5th place time and adjusting the time standards
accordingly.
We must push for this at the state level and use all of our
political clout. I would rather take less kids to states and have a
firm time standard to make it to states. This is the biggest problem
in WPIAL swimming today.
6. For state championships, Illinois has tremendous success holding
all the events of prelims on Friday and then all of the Finals on the
second day. This allows swimmers to double in events more reasonably.
I’m not sure how a 2-sex meet on one weekend would work. Holding
all the Prelims for both boys and girls on the same day might make an
impossible day.
Day: Evening:
Day 1: Girls Prelims + Girls Diving
Day 2: Boys Prelims + Girls Finals
Day 3: Boys Diving + Boys Finals
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanks.
Sincerely Yours,
Mark Rauterkus, President
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