National Junior Swimming League (m11)

Round 2 is over and seems to have gone without any significant hitches on the day.  Many thanks to our host clubs and in particular to referee Richard McGonagal, who despite not having a club in our league stepped in to assist Kingston at their gala. I’m pleased to say that clubs who were warned about not supplying officials in round 1 came good in round 2, which made things much easier. Please always contact your hosts early and supply two assistants even if these can only be qualified to timekeeper level.

A query was raised about event 49 the canon relay: rules state that this must be swum in ascending age order. However, there is no rule that girls or boys must swim first. Each club may decide this for themselves. Although they are now available online, the host club should bring a copy of the rules to the meet. Referees at Southbury were mistaken in this interpretation during round 2, so please be aware for the finals.

Here are the results of second round, the league placings after round two and the galas and venues for the final round on 26^th June.  Please note the final round is seeded and the lanes are pre-allocated.  Make sure the referees at the 3^rd round galas know this.

Please note:

division 1 points from round 1 were adjusted after Thurrock discovered that they had accidentally swam an over-aged swimmer in the girls 10 years medley relay and breaststroke. I inadvertently DQd some other races and these have been re-instated. Fortunately it did not affect the league points and draw.

division 2 points from round 1 were adjusted after Hackney discovered that they accidentally swam an over-aged swimmer in some of the 10 year old races. This has resulted in Dunmow placing above them, however this was discovered too late to change the round 2 fixtures, but is reflected in the spearheading of round 3.

I will email a list of hosting duties.  I will send the hosting pack of programmes, recorders sheets, etc about 3 weeks before the gala.  I will also ensure that the trophies, and where applicable medals get to the gala. I will let you know the arrangements.

Good luck in the finals!

It has been brought to my attention by some very unfortunately people who attended Freeport Braintree for the round one meet, that I need to warn anybody using the car park there is a 6 hour parking restriction. This normally wouldn’t affect attendees of the Junior League, which is only 2-3h long, but should you choose to stay on and go shopping, or for a meal, please be aware that you must pay for parking if you will be more than 6h in the car park.  Payment needs to be made online or by SMS txt message, once you have registered your vehicle at myringgo.com. I’m told the fine for non-payment is £60. You may be able to appeal if you can prove you have been shopping by presenting a receipt; but this is not guaranteed.  I would not like anyone else to fall victim to this and particularly wish to warn clubs from outside Essex who may be unfamiliar with this venue.

Clubs about to host round 2 at the weekend are requested to go to the “Resources for host clubs” page and re-download the Excel spreadsheet for recording the results. This spreadsheet has been modified so that galas with less than 8 clubs can enter the number of competing clubs. This will change the points allocation to how it is specified in the rules (number of competing clubs = number of points for a 1st place). This is necessary for Division two where there are less than 8 clubs in each gala.

You might be surprised but at least half of all coaches submitted a round 1 teamsheet on the night that was entirely filled out by hand. Most are clear to read and this fulfils the requirement of the rules (but I’m going to change them!)

Can I please ask that coaches use the provided Excel spreadsheet and complete it using a computer so that what you hand in on the night is typed (bar any last minute changes you scribble on it).  Next year, I will be making it a requirement that the coach send over the electronic copy (the spreadsheet, not a scanned JPEG) if asked to do so in retrospect by myself.

The reason for this: should we have any disputes, I need to be able to pull all the names from your teamsheet and compare them to your submitted ASA lists.  I need live text to be able to do this.

You might also be surprised that more than half of the ASA lists that were sent to me were scanned JPEG or hand-written so that I cannot pull the live text.

When you have so many hundreds of swimmers to verify, you simply cannot do it without access to live text and comparison tools. So, for this season, please be aware that  I am not able to routinely check that all swims were bona fide, in the short space I have to get the incoming results collated, published and the next round announced in anything like a reasonable time for the hosts to prepare.  I suspect that this has always been the case in the past and the Organiser only dealt with specific complaints if they were raised by someone. But how can another team’s coach know if all your swimmers are correct? I do not and will not publish your teamsheets for other coaches to see.  Mistakes, however genuine can alter the draw position for the next round, but by the time this is discovered could be too late.

In future, I will provide an Excel template also for your ASA lists, which must be returned as Excel so I can pull the list of names as live text. It is then a matter of minutes to verify the names with the ASA.

While we rely on honesty in all amateur events (and there’s every evidence that clubs are extremely honest), particularly at the top of Div1 its going to be a very closely fought competition this year, and next year I can only see it getting even tighter. All participants need to have faith in the system. Currently I have an audit trail, but its very hard to follow.

Fixtures page now contains the draw for round two.  This takes place on Sunday 22 May. Hosts highlighted in green are:

• Div1 Gala1 – Thurrock, at Cranes Farm
• Div1 Gala2 – Braintree, at Freeport
• Div2 Gala1 – Kingston Royals B, at Barnet
• Div2 Gala2 – Luton, at Southbury Rd

As per rules, odd teams from gala1 are meeting even teams from gala2.  Lane allocation will be drawn from a hat on the night.

Of these galas, Barnet is the only one where I am unsure if the hosts or other visiting teams can call upon the services of a qualified referee (although Kingston DID offer to host this season, for which we are very grateful – we never turn down an offer!)

So, if you are going to Barnet, please contact Kingston promptly and let them know which officials you can supply. And if alerted in advance, I will do whatever I can to find additional officials.

I draw everyone’s attention to point 12.2 of the rules:

• Each Club shall supply a qualified judge and its own lane timekeeper. (Due to the difficulty in obtaining judges qualified to a County level, ‘qualified’ is defined here, as a minimum, to be someone with a considerable experience of swimming competitions.) Any Club failing to supply these officials at its designated gala shall pay the league a fine of £30 for each official not reporting to the Gala referee.

There was an instance in round 1 where a club turned up with only 1 official. All visiting clubs must supply two, even if they are only qualified to time keep.  Once this has been verified, that club will be fined.  Failure to pay a fine will result in exclusion from next year’s league.

I know what its like to be a small club with no officials, I’ve been in that position once. As long as we are alerted in advance we try to find someone to represent you. We like to include small clubs in junior competitions where we can; but in this instance there was no effort made to alert us.

First of all a big thanks to all our hosts in round 1, you did a great job and things went relatively smoothly at all galas, even though I know it can be a lot of work (especially if you are a ref or chief timekeeper!)

You can now see the Results menu shows the current state of the points table after round one, and the positional results of each gala and hence points allocated. The menu also contains the results spreadsheets for each gala.

Apologies for slight delay in getting these results out. There were one or two glitches/adjustments that I needed to make as follows:

1. The results spreadsheet is only set up for 8 team galas, so it needed to be fixed for Div2. I believe Gala2 at Basildon was correctly adjusted on the night, so points should be what was announced that evening.  Gala1 was not adjusted until later, so points relative to the division would be lower than announced on the night as they should have been points out of 5 (teams swimming) and then also later adjusted to a 6 team average, according to the rules (multiplied by 7/6).  For round two, I will fix the spreadsheet, so please download it again.
2. Div1 Gala1.  Thurrock realised after the event that they had swum an over-age swimmer in the 9 year girls (she is 10 before round 3 date). Thurrock volunteered this information and we concluded that the swimmer be DQd for those events. This reduced Thurrock’s overall points significantly and boosted other teams points some, but not enough to change any of the overall placings.
3. Div1 Gala1. A complaint was upheld concerning event 33.  Braintree 9 year girl was DQd for a false start, but this was actually caused by a distraction from a member of the crowd calling out. She was been re-instated but as she DNS the best we could do was give her 1 point for 8th place.

Please note that for Div1 the 8 team spreadsheet had no easy way to enter whether a swimmer was DQd or DNS without affecting the calculations.  So in the spreadsheet you will just see no time, and as a coach you know from you teamsheet if you DNS an event. Otherwise assume I hold a DQ slip.  I hope to get a chance to enter either DQ or DNS and re-post these spreadsheets.

and we’re off!  Round 1: 24th April 2016

Round 1 fixtures are confirmed.
All pools for round 1 have been confirmed/paid.

All clubs have submitted their lists of eligible swimmers.
All clubs have paid their subscription.
Host-club packs were dispatched today.

But you can also find everything you need under “Resources for host clubs” whether you are a host or not e.g. Team Managers can find the blank spreadsheet for the Team List, which must be submitted on the night.

Please look out for regular updates of the contacts list via direct email (I do not post names and addresses on the website).  Please reply promptly to your hosts with information regarding the officials you will be bringing.

Hosts please return the results promptly by email. The draw for round 2 depends upon the results; only then can I select new hosts and dispatch the programs.

I wish you all an exciting and competitive meet.

Jonathan

The problem with not knowing until the end of January whether Clubs will actually compete means that the best laid plans at the time of the AGM have to be re-drawn.

We’ve now also lost Cheshunt and Saffron Walden, reducing our Div 2 to 11 clubs.  In fact had we known this before the AGM we could have booked cheaper 6 lane pools for Div 2. But it can’t be helped. It makes no sense to reduce the size of Div 1 until the total number of competing clubs drops to 24, so we retain the Div 1 plans as they were.

Please keep a constant eye on this website! As you can see from the fixtures page, I’m afraid I have had to make new choices about host clubs. We now have Chelmsford, Cambridge, Epping and Dunmow for round 1.  As previously said, other clubs who offered to host – we will take you up on this in subsequent rounds.

I have now heard from all clubs – although I’m still chasing one or two for monies – I believe this is the final list of competing clubs, hence the actual draw (fingers crossed). And I now have contact names at each club so will send these out to you all by direct mail.

Jonathan

Not the most auspicious of starts… which will teach me not to send out the Round 1 letter until I have received all the subscriptions!

Hatfield had to withdraw from the league.  As they were in Division 1, this has promoted Kingston Royals A, and completely re-aligned the draw for round 1. It also put some of the erstwhile hosts at the same gala, and so I have needed to select two new hosts.

Please look carefully at the fixtures page.  Cambridge and Cheshunt are now hosting, in place of Braintree and Kingston (those clubs who kindly offered to host will be called upon in later rounds).

It also means, as we now have an odd number of clubs in Division 2, I will have the interesting job of adjusting the league points according to the differing number of clubs in each gala – so that’s another one to watch… see if I get it right!

Please may I urge every club that has not yet done so, to confirm that they are competing and to pay the subscription. Thank you.