Saturday, January 19, 2008

We should add the Johnston County team for 1 year

I posted a comment to Bob's January meeting post, but I suspect it went unnoticed.

I believe that the current TSA bylaws, as written, allow the executive committee (the 4 officers) to approve non-conforming swim teams on an annual basis (see my previous comment for details).

Looking at the map, I see that Riverwood is not farther than Zebulon from 69 of the 71 clubs in TSA. Looking at scheduling, 72 clubs will be easier to schedule than 71. I cannot imagine having to "cut" swimmers from a summer league swim team to be eligible to compete.

I propose that we, the TSA board, ask the TSA executive commitee to allow Riverwood to participate in TSA for the 2008 swim season.

If it works out well, then we can consider amending the bylaws to accommodate out-of-Wake-County members. If it doesn't, then it was only 1 year.

Coleman Poag
Cary Swim Club

2 comments:

ABrooks said...

As one who lives in Zebulon, we're not out in the boonies. With the addition of 540 & the 64 bypass, it takes all of 15-20 minutes to get to the beltline. I think you'll find that it will take considerably longer to reach Riverwood, as they are well off the beaten path. By allowing out of Wake county clubs into TSA, we'll be opening ourselves to not only Johnston county, but Franklin, Durham, and Granville counties, as well. We are already going to be adding new Wake County clubs with additional growth. Would we then have more than two leagues, or even more divisions? Should a motion be made at the next meeting, Zebulon's vote will be an emphatic NO.

TSA Blog Administrator said...

It seems that Coleman and Ann have diametrically opposed opinions on the relative accessibility of Riverwood vs. Zebulon CC, so I decided to put both claims to the test.

Zebulon/ZCC's tentative ranking in the 2008 North League is 30 (2nd seed in Division 8), so I measured the drive from ZCC to each of the other clubs in the same division, plus the clubs in Division 7 above and Division 9 below (basically, all 11 of this season's potential meet opponents).

I used GoogleMaps and the addresses in the TSA map to get distances and drive times between Zebulon CC and each of those 11 clubs. I then did the same comparison between Riverwood and those same 11 clubs. The results are that Zebulon is, on average, slightly farther away from those 11 clubs than Riverwood is (26 miles vs. 24 miles). However, Zebulon is on average a slightly quicker destination to reach (37 minutes vs. 41 minutes). Between Zebulon and Riverwood themselves, the journey is 19 miles and 38 minutes, which is several miles shorter but one minute longer than Zebulon’s average travel to each of the other 11 clubs. (All figures are rounded to the nearest minute and mile.)

Here's the raw data:

From Zebulon (ranked 30th) to:

25. Heritage: 17 miles, 30 minutes
26. Wendell: 10, 22
27. Hawthorne: 38, 47
28. Lakemont: 27, 38
29. JCC: 36, 44
31. Bedford: 23, 43
32. Banbury: 33, 44
33. TCC: 25, 34
34. Hedingham: 20, 35
35. Raleigh Racquet: 27, 36
36. Crabtree: 30, 39

Average: 26 miles, 37 minutes


From Riverwood to:

25. Heritage: 25 miles, 44 minutes
26. Wendell: 9, 15
27. Hawthorne: 34, 51
28. Lakemont: 23, 41
29. JCC: 31, 47
31. Bedford: 29, 48
32. Banbury: 29, 47
33. TCC: 20, 38
34. Hedingham: 18, 38
35. Raleigh Racquet: 22, 39
36. Crabtree: 26, 42

Average: 24 miles, 41 minutes