In a pre-session coaches meeting, after several teams threatened to walk out of the meet, organizers assured coaches that the timing issues at the TYR ISCA Junior National Cup hosted by Liberty University has been fixed. The explanation given to coaches was a vague “wires crossed” story within the microphone tied to the timing system. We have reached out to Liberty, ISCA, and Daktronics, but none have responded to our requests for more information.
Supporting the claim that the issue was fixed is that almost every swim in finals on Thursday is slower than prelims (where the problem, causing about a 4-tenths of a second improvement on swimmers’ actual times, was still in effect).
USA Swimming is aware of the issue, but hasn’t released any decision yet about how to handle the previous times from the meet which includes at least 5 National Age Group Records (including a 50.85 in the 100 yard breaststroke from Michael Andrew).
Early in Thursday evening’s session, after the change was allegedly made, the Mason Manta Rays’ boys 200 free relay clocked a 1:22.51, which is faster than the old 15-16 National Age Group Record of 1:22.88 set by the Canyon Aquatic Club in 2015. That relay included a 19.81 anchor from Carson Foster. Whether that swim is accepted as a national record or not remains to be seen.
How can the Gator Swim Team, the meet host, maintain their gold level 4 status after running such a poor meet? Also, the winner of the 50 free 16U was a Gator swimmer – he had a false start and was allowed to get back on the blocks and swim and win the event. No official ever spoke to the Gator swimmer as to the cause for the false start. There has been a shortage of officials and timers the entire meet as well #crookedgators #fakeswim
Agree on the 50 free 16U false start..! Everyone in the stands boo’d the decision to let the swimmer to get back on the blocks and race. Yet nothing was done by the officials. #fakeswim
Is there video out there anywhere? Would like to see it.
flowswimming.com video’d all the races.
I understand that the meet had a timing issue. I don’t understand the blame being thrown on the meet host. They rented out a brand new, top quality facility to run the meet. The equipment at the facility was the issue not something the host brought.
I blame the officials who did not compare the hand times to the pad times, and remained oblivious to the issue, while timers, spectators, and coaches were keenly aware that there was a problem.
I am not casting blame but there have been all sorts of issues. There were dozens of kids coughing in the hallways on day 2 because there was an issue with the heat getting too high and messing with sensors that make the system dump more chlorine in the pool. Every day they begs spectators to time and are delayed because of it. Kids are literally standing by the blocks in Heat one waiting. The timing system failed during the men’s 200 free relay and there were no splits. Still none For some of us this is important. I don’t know who is to blame for any of it and I don’t think it’s intentional but maybe a sign that… Read more »
Two swimmers dived in the water before the start and not one was DQ. The officials said nothing to either swimmer. Would not happen in a State meet.
At least one of the false start swimmers was a Gator swimmer – and that swimmer ended up winning the race. Gator was the meet host….
It can be viewed on floswimming.com
every single finals 50 free time was slower than prelims. As the famed lawyer Jackie Chiles once said:
“It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous.”
Anyone have video from their last chance qualifier meet?
This should be looked into more. There was multiple swims that got people to NCAAs at that meet, and most of them were giant best times. A few weeks later, the issue comes up again on a greater scale.
So what about the times up until now?
Good for the coaches for threatening to walk out, but why did it even get to that point?
Coach, See the article linked by “retired coach” above. TL;DR they (USA-S) can either throw out all the times, or use the hand watch times to determine final times.
I understand the options. What did the meet organizers decide to do?
I think it’s USA-S’s call at this point? And I don’t think they have officially weighed in yet.
It would be good to publicize how this error came about so that it does not occur in any future meets. I do not know if it is a similar situation, but beginning at least back in the mid to late 90s, it was possible to use the wrong start system hookup on some starting units that offered both a closed (colorado) or open (omega/daktronics) socket for the mic feed to the timing console. If you used the wrong socket you could have times that ranged from .2 to .7 faster than they really were, and if your daktronics timing console had the wrong setting itself (option for either open or closed) you could have the similar error even when… Read more »
Never mind: am reading the swimswam articles out of order and just read this one
https://staging2.swimswam.com/times-from-junior-national-cup-called-into-question/
which confirmed it is the daktronics console set up error.
Meet organizers need to be straight with the coaches here and with the governing body. Those records cannot be accepted.
It sure looks shady that they waited until day 3 to fix it, after they started getting questions from the press and coaches threatened to leave the meet. The issue should have been caught within the first couple of events, and in any case, if there were consistent reports yesterday in the SwimSwam comment board, with evidence in the form of race videos, they should have looked into it before prelims today.
Yeah, I don’t get it. How do you not have all the backup timers come up and say,”uhh, we’re all way off here… we’re consistently getting slower times than what’s on the board”?
Absurd. I feel bad for all the swimmers who thought they were crushing it only to find out that their times are now null and void.