If you aren't first you're last?

So today was a rather normal day in the life of your average Pool Assistant/ Assistant to the Aquatic Supervisor/ Whatever title I feel like calling my job to make me feel more professional.  Normal in the sense that I was an integral part in running yet another large swim meet, this time it was the MISCA Men's high school meet, with over 650 swimmers in attendance.  Yep, the deck was pretty packed.

For those of you who do not know how swim meets usually run, they are usually broken into Events and then the Events are broken up into Heats.  Events are just the types of races.  So that's the swim stroke and the distance they are swimming.  An example of this would be 50 Free, which is 50 yards freestyle.  The Heats in these Events are literally just breaking down the events into segments as not every swimmer who signs up for an event can swim at once if there's only 10 or 8 lanes like most usual pools.

Because of this structure, the first heat of an event usually consists of the swimmers who give a previous swim time that is the slowest.  This means that the times in the heats will tend to get progressively faster until the last heat, which tends to be "the best."

As I ran the timing system for the meet today I noticed something that I've seen more than once at this job.  I saw the person and their team's coach freak the heck out when the swimmer got first place in the first meet.  Now I know that they were probably happy because they either beat a school record or a some time that they were trying to get, however it sparked the question in my mind:

Which is better, to be the best of the worst or the worst of the best.

Now real quick, I'd like to clarify that the swimmer who got first isn't ranked at all amongst the worst swimmers.  Heck, I know he was faster than anything I could do, however in that particular environment he was the best amongst the lower set of people.

I think the answer to this little question in my head is that it would probably be better to be the worst of the best, as you would have room for improvement, whereas when you're the best of of the worst you're already maxed out, although I can think of some counter arguments to this.

For one, to be the worst amongst the best it must be a little disheartening.  No one likes being last.  No one likes losing, so even though you may have the potential to reach above the best, it would be difficult even in the emotional sense.

Secondly, even thought you are the best of a particular group of people, it doesn't mean you can't improve.  I'm not gonna give the illusion that I'm a swimming expert.  I swam in junior high and have constant but minimal exposure to it through my sister and job.  But an example that works with swimming is Michael Phelps back when he was the poster boy of American swimming.  He may have been the best in the world of certain groups, but that didn't mean he couldn't train harder and get better.  So I think it's still possible to improve even if you don't have a bar to set it to.  Heck, people do stuff with that with things like technology all the time. 

So that's just a little thought that popped into my head today and my two cents on it.  Maybe I just typed this all becasue I like to hear my keyboard clickity clack, but I thought I would share it with you all.  Hope you all are having a great day, night or in-betwixt. 

Also, before I go:

This video is pretty much irrelevant, but while looking for music to go with writing this I rediscovered this old thing.  I figured I'd share it for nostalgia's case.  Also, check out Indiana Jones' nose... it's big... and that's the joke.

Hope you all have a good one, thanks for reading!