The dynamic of NCAA swimming is changing. It’s been coming for a few years. The 100 fly/100 back double is now almost commonplace in college swimming: likely a function of continued emphasis on underwaters meaning that what happens on top of the water is become more-and-more irrelevant in short course swimming.
The momentum really picked up a few years ago when swimmers like UNC’s Carly Smith and (then Virginia swimmer, now Arizona swimmer) Lauren Smart began swimming the 100 fly/100 back double on day two of the meet. Now there’s a slew of swimmers swimmers like Tom Shields, who won both national titles at last year’s meet, and Cindy Tran who take on both races.
This is not a wholly new phenomenon. There have been swimmers in the last generation like Albert Subirats who did both the 100 fly and 100 back on day 2 of this meet.
This year, though, the trend may be hitting a peak. As the women’s precut psych sheets were revealed today, we noticed that the top four seeds in the 100 backstroke are also entered in the 100 fly. Those four are Cindy Tran, Rachel Bootsma, Paige Miller, and Felicia Lee.
The SEC has now transitioned to a 5-day meet schedule. Nearly every major conference in the country uses a 4-day meet schedule. Perhaps in the least it’s time for the NCAA to consider some modification of the current four-day conference schedule.
Short of that, though, there is a relatively simple change that could be made to meet the evolution of the sport. That would be to switch the 100 fly and the 100 back on the current day-two meet lineup.
The current day two schedule:
200 medley relay
400 IM
100 fly
200 free
100 breast
100 back
800 free relay
What’s interesting about the involved swimmers on the women’s side is that they’re almost always better backstrokers than butterfliers. The change would allow them to be less-tired when they hit that backstroke.
Like all rules changes, of course, this debate then becomes a question about what the goal of the rule is. There will be some who would prefer that the double stays the way it is; because that at least minimally negates the advantage of those swimmers who are just underwater superstars. At most levels of swimming, the season is all geared toward maximizing performance at a single year-end point, which would urge the change to happen. The college season, because of the NCAA qualifying system, already varies from that theory though, where it’s about who can perform best under a given set of circumstances.
Similarly, there are plenty of examples throughout sports where rules were changed both to take advantage of evolving skill sets, and to negate dominant skill sets. When Wilt Chamberlain was the dominant player in the NBA because of his size, the NBA expanded the lane, which forced him a little further away from the basket. In sort of the opposite direction, when Michael Jordan was the star, the NBA limited the amount of contact that could be made on the perimeter to allow players like him to attack the rim more often.
In this scenario, changing the schedule would be the equivalent of the Jordan Rules. Leaving them the same would be like expanding the lane.
Even within our own sport we’ve seen it. FINA has generally reacted to the evolution of the sport by loosening the rules to accommodate. That includes splitting the butterfly off of breaststroke a decade ago; and more recently the hoopla we’ve seen with the underwater dolphin kick on the breaststroke pullout.
My suggestion: Use this year’s SEC 4.5 day schedule and add the 1000 free on the first day. Also combine the men’s and women’s meets. What a great event it would be. I would also be for allowing swimmers to swim 4 individual events. Perhaps giving them the choice of 4 ind. and 3 relays or 3 ind. and 4 relays. Adding the 1000 would make it more fair for distance swimmers.
The NCAA championships are already favoring the sprinters… Why change the order to encourage sprinting even more????
“Jordan rules” were actually a system of defensive principles used by the Detroit Pistons to get to Jordan in the late 80’s
pretty much involved as much contact from as many players as possible without too many fouls
Imagine having to share a swim lane with Bill Laimbeer.
The change I most want to see in the NCAA is to switch to short course meters. I know there are huge barriers – especially the number of SCY pools. But I would sure like to see US swimming move to meters. That would then put a lot more US names in the world record list!
Amen! With the NCAA being such a high-level meet, the SCM world record book would be much more in line with the LCM world records. The rest of the world doesn’t care about yards anyway. Plus, as any foreign swimmer will tell you, it really isn’t that big of an adjustment to swim SCY and SCM. So it’s not unfair to the teams that don’t have access to a pool with the option of SCM. It’s still pretty much a level playing field.
They swam NCAAs in SCM in, I want to say 2000 and 2004. No one managed to get particularly enthusiastic about it, and the only lingering note about those meets was a number of US Open records that were significantly faster than the recognized world records (nationality rule) until the supersuit era came along.
Uhm no, the world records broken at those meets (among others, George Bovell 200 IM, Fred Bousquet 50 free, Peter Marshall 100 back, Ed Moses both breaststrokes back in 2000) were official and recognized and if yards times get you more fired up than world records… well, only in America 🙂
i guess only in america, but that’s because the vast majority of high school age group, YMCA and everything meets are in short course, so we know the times better than we know meters times, especially scm
short course meters seems “caught in the middle” between the simple easiness of a scy pool and the intimidating professional Olympic 50m pool
also crocker had a great ’04 NCAAs, WR in the 100 free and 100 fly
If you’re talking about Auburn’s times in the relays (which were faster than the world records) then yes, obviously the US Open record won’t be recognized as a world record when they had different nationalities on the relay… But the Dream Team (Peirsol, Hansen, Crocker, Weber-Gale) did break a world record in the 400 MR
I was thinking of the relays, and IIRC Cal also had a few better than WR or world best times but also ran into the multiple passports rule. And there were a couple of near-misses in terms of the highest fnishing single nationality team getting 3rd or 4th and finishing like a tenth off the recognized world record, which would have made for an interesting challenge to what I think is a FINA rule that you’ve got to win the race to get the WR.
Those Auburn men’s relays were utterly stacked during that time.
If you think the schedule is bad on swimming what can we say about track and field? I’m also a big track and field fan and this weekend there are the NCAA championships. The schedule is absolutely stupid and doesn’t help the great performances. Only held in 2 days. And the most stupid is the first day. There aren’t prelims of the races in the morning and there are the 60m and the 200m the same day. So we have in less than 2 hours Friday evening the 60m prelims, then the 200m prelims and then the 200m finals. Most of the best sprinters make the double 60m/200m. This crazy schedule kills them. Please put at least the prelims in… Read more »
I suspect that’s because indoor track remains a contractual obligation afterthought at both the national and global level, and they just want to get the meet out of the way so they can get to the outdoor season.
I tried making an ideal 3 day schedule and its really hard, every probable double you fix you create a new one. No line up will be perfect.
Just for fun tried to make an ideal schedule that would fit everyone’s needs, came up with 2. I’m not saying I agree that the schedule should be switched (i think having the event line up as is adds an interesting strategy element to the team entry side of things), but I was just curious to see if a plausible schedule could be made. Kind of fun to sort out what would cause the biggest conflicts and what works well together.
Day 1: 200 Fr, 400 IM, 100 Br
Day 2: 100 Fly, 200 Bk, 500 Fr, 100 Fr, 200 IM
Day 3: 1650 Fr, 100 Bk, 200 Br, 200 Fly, 50 Fr
Throw the relays in… Read more »
well why don’t we just have a 16 day meet where every event is on its own day? This would guarantee that no one would ever have to double. In fact we could make it 32 days so that prelims and finals are on separate days……. (or 28 or whatever it would be if relays had no prelims)
We have to remember that these are student athletes… They can’t just be missing a month at a time to have their meet. Switching the events is a bad idea because it will just screw someone else over. For instance If you moved 100 fly to the first day I’m sure that would have a negative effect on a lot of people… Read more »
The hardest triple is for your best 200 freestylers. That is a wicked event to do three times in one day. Just because it has been done for decades doesn’t meant it shouldn’t be changed.