Friday, July 25, 2008

Why are TSA meets held on Tuesday night?

Why are TSA meets held on Tuesday night?

I have asked this question to a number of people and no one seems to know the answer other than "that is the way it has always been".

With the number of kids in year round school in Wake County, Tuesday night is always a school night for some percentage of our swimmers (MDCC) and I would suspect many (most?) other teams are in the same situation. This year we had quite a few families who did not want their children scheduled in the later events (Fly and/or Free Relay) because it was a school night.

Are other clubs faced with this same challenge? If so, how are you dealing with it?

In other areas (e.g. Virginia where my sister's kids swim) meets are held on Saturday morning.

Between the school night i ssues and the constant battle with severe weather each season, wouldn't it make sense to consider holding meets on Saturday morning instead of Tuesday night?

I am sure there are pros and cons for any day of the week and no particular day will meet with universal agreement but I am curious as to how Tuesday night came to be the night when meets are scheduled.

Mike

1 comment:

TSA Blog Administrator said...

I'm not sure anyone currently associated with TSA was around when the league started in 1971, so we may not have a definitive answer to the Tuesday night question.

My own speculation: they wanted to pick a relatively UNPOPULAR time for using the pool, precisely because holding a swim meet means closing the pool to all to other club members. Therefore, weekends (when pools are busiest) are off the table. Likewise with Friday nights. Weekday mornings and afternoons won't work because many parents are at work then. That leaves Monday though Thursday night. But if you want to have a standard makeup night in case of weather, you need to start before Thursday. So Tuesday night is one of three possible choices that meet all those other criteria.

There was some discussion at our January Board meeting of looking into other options, including Saturday mornings, but no one ultimately made any motion to adopt such a schedule. Last year’s post-season survey (http://www.tsanc.googlepages.com/2007SurveySchedulingOptions.htm) showed limited interest in adopting a new schedule, but a majority of respondents favored sticking with Tuesday evenings.