It turns out adding support for mixed-gender events isn’t as simple as I thought it might be.  Because so much of wp-SwimTeam revolves around age groups, I haven’t made it very easy on myself to add this enhancement.

Events are tied to age groups so in order to add a mixed gender event, I need a mixed gender age group to associate it with.  A mixed-gender age group doesn’t really make any sense although it is similar to another feature which isn’t easy to support – age groups which are supersets of other age groups.

I have learned that some leagues have “special” events which are open to swimmers from multiple age groups.  For example:  The league my niece and nephew swim in has open freestyle events at the end of the meet.  There are two age groups (10 and under, 11-18) for each gender.  The wp-SwimTeam definition of an age group doesn’t work well for these groups either although it isn’t as problematic as a mixed gender event it.

After noodling around with a few ideas I think I have come to the conclusion that I need some sort of Age Group classification to allow defining a group which spans ages and/or genders.  I am struggling with nomenclature for these groups but I believe the fundamental idea is sound.

For now I am referring to these special age groups as a “Combined” age group.  They will not be counted in swimmer population numbers but will be used for Events and Entries.