Relays are fun! And OMS is allowing members to sign up with club OREG for free this year! You read correctly — it is FREE! That would make more fast swimmers available for relays. All members of the same club can swim in a relay. Since Club OREG has a lot of swimmers, it makes it easy to find a relay team to swim with. If you sign up as ‘Unattached’, however, you cannot swim on any relay team.
World Record 200 Medley Relay; Age group 280-319; Joy Ward, Rebecca Kay, Janet Gettling, Sandi Rousseau
There are several ways to swim on a relay team, you can choose one below that works for you.
- Attend the meet and hope to find some swimmers who want to swim a relay
- Look online at those registered in the meet to find who is in your age group that you can swim with
- Swim a relay with your own team members
- Let Brent Washburne find a relay for you that would be in your age group
- Plan a relay, with the purpose to break a record
For some meets, Brent Washburne has used a computer program that he wrote to get people on relays with the fastest potential times in their age group. He may be able to help you get started with a relay group.
The relay team that broke the World record at Hood River on November 19, 2016, was a planned relay. They swam a Long Course 200 Medley relay together at the USMS Summer Nationals in August, and their time of 2:53.85 set Oregon, Zone, and National records, and made them realize that a world record was possible. The standing world record in Short Course was 2:51.17 by a GBR team . . . just 2.68 seconds faster than their LC time at Nationals!
Excitement ran high in Hood River when the team got on the blocks. They had to beat the time of 2:51.17. When all was over, they had swum a 2:46.92! Awesome!
If you average the times on their swims, it would be, for 50 meters, 41.73 seconds (of course, you can’t average a medley relay), but this gives you an idea of how fast these ladies were swimming!
So, set up some relays with your friends, or with new friends, and have some fun!