Swim team dual meets finished only an hour or so ago but the scores are already posted on our 2015 Swim Team page and coaches are pouring over them to see how they will fare on Saturday’s Time Trial.
It’s been another incredible summer of competitive swimming and, as we do every year, we now shift from the Dual meet phase of the summer competition to the Finals phase. This will change how swim team will function for the next 10 days. So far, each swim meet has been against only one other pool in one division. These meets are organized to allow for the maximum participation possible.
This Saturday, on August 1st, each NAA pool will participate in Division Time Trials in their respective division. In this event, swimmers will attempt to qualify against not only the other pools in their division but against all 19 NAA association pools who will be simultaneously doing Division Time Trials with their own sections. These Time Trials are organized so we can determine the fastest 12 swimmers for each event in each age group across the entire NAA. These 12 swimmers will compete in the NAA Championship Big Meet which will be held this year on Saturday August 8th.
For all the coaches, strategy for this phase of the summer competition has been going on since before the dual meet season even started! During the Time Trials, each pool can qualify only 2 swimmers per age-category in each event and, with the exception of the 15 and over “Open” category, each swimmer can swim a maximum of 2 personal events and 1 relay. Organizing a team to put the optimum swimmers into the optimum events is a challenging task. To do this, the coaches must consider a variety of factors including the swimmer’s best times so far during the summer, the speed of swimmers at other pools and the number of swimmers who can fit into a particular category. Unfortunately this means that not everyone will be able to swim in the Time Trials or the Big Meet.
Only once the results have been compiled from all 3 divisions will we be able to post the combined results and will you know who will qualify for the Big Meet.
Good luck to all our swimmers!