The Canadian Age Group nationals have served as a staple meet for young swimmers all across Canada for decades. The qualification process has always been fairly simple, qualify for your event and compete at nationals. You could take a certain number of bonus events as well based on the number of events you actually qualified in.
Last year Swimming Canada changed their regiment for the qualification process regarding the meet and made it even more difficult for Canadian age-groupers to qualify. Swimming Canada passed the rule that every swimmer must qualify for three individual events to be eligible to compete at the mid-summer meet in hopes of encouraging age-groupers to qualify for more events. As a result of the new rule however, Swimming Canada saw a huge decline in the number of qualifiers. Swimming Canada declined to comment on the issue.
At the 2012 age group nationals in Calgary, there were 818 male athletes, 771 female athletes, making a grand total of 1589 athletes. At the 2013 age group nationals after the rule that you must qualify in three events was put into effect there were 385 male athletes, 517 female athletes, adding up to a total of 902 athletes. The huge 43% decrease in athletes is an alarming number, questioning how successful this new rule might be. The number of male athletes competing was reduced by over half from 2012 to 2013.
The 2014 Age Group Nationals are going to be held at the Pan Am Pool in Winnipeg from July 23-27. The new national time standards that Swimming Canada releases every season haven’t been released yet, so only time will tell as to what decision Swim Canada has made about their Age Group Championships.
Sticking with the decision might over time help age-groupers in Canada reach success in a larger multitude of events. Currently looking at international competition, Canada has never had a truly great all-around swimmer. Most of Canada’s swimmers have had specific strokes and disciplines that they’ve focused on rather than the large multi-event programs that many Americans have.
Just to name a few of Canada’s greatest swimmers; Brent Hayden focused on sprint free, Ryan Cochrane distance free, Annamay Pierse the 200m breaststroke, Alex Baumann the IM’s, Victor Davis the breaststroke events, and Mark Tewksbury the 100m backstroke. None of these swimmers have shown true diversity in their events although achieving great success in their main races.
Swimming Canada’s new rule could definitely spark an era of Canadian swimmers who are competitive on the international scale in more than one discipline. On the other hand the new rule could act as a discouraging factor for Canada’s youth.
Swimming Canada will make the decision whether or not to carry out with the new rule, where we will have to wait and see the outcome play out.
My son is really good in all 4 strokes, however he could not swim in Ontario age group because he is not good at 800m free and 400IM, because he is a sprinter, I have no clue why is it that difficult to understand sprinters are not good at long distance, I was a track athlete it was the same concept, I was trained to do 100m and 200m, I could never do 800m, because its involves different muscle group.
I coached in Canada for a year and went to Age Group Nationals. Thought it was a great meet and idea. Was way too big as a meet. Two pools going at all times and long sessions. Starting from both ends for the distance events. It needed to be reduced in numbers.
One thing I really liked about Swim Canada is that to qualify for championship meets, even regional ones, you had to not only qualify in that event but qualify in two prerequisites. For 11-12’s 400IM & 800FR. The prerequisites were an easier qualification time and you did not have to swim them at the meet. This meant that kids would ask to swim those events at meets… Read more »
I always thought the 400IM/800 free prereq for younger swimmers was silly.
Distance swimmers are distance swimmers and sprinters are sprinters.
I don’t see Swim USA with the same ridiculous prereqs and they have much faster younger swimmers than we do.
“As a result of the new rule however, Swimming Canada saw a huge decline in the number of qualifiers. Swimming Canada declined to comment on the issue.”
Ken Radford of Swimming Canada appeared on my podcast last September to discuss this at length… a smaller, more competitive meet was on their agenda:
http://coachmikepodcast.podbean.com/2012/09/27/coachmikepodcast-episode-28/
This change is long overdue. In recent years Age Group Nationals have not seen top age group swimming. This is because the size and speed of the meet deters the top age group performers to attend when they can compete in Senior Nationals and still get second swims. If you are truly an “elite” age group swimmer you are good at multiple events, end of story. At a young age, fast swimming is fast swimming. By forcing swimmers to not specialize at a young age there is a better chance of success later in one’s swim career. If there is an anomaly of an age grouper who is terrific at only one or two events then chances are they are… Read more »
Canada’s age group champs goes all the way up to 17 for girls and 18 for boys, which really overlaps with what both countries also consider to be juniors. So, it’s not uncommon to see a 17-year-old female or 18-year-old male do Canada Cup (jr./sr.), AG champs and Senior Nationals all in a row, sometimes in different provinces and in the span of barely a month! Anyone who thinks that’s a good system might want to sit down and compare end-of-season progression with that of US swimmers of the same age. Quantity and quality don’t always go hand in hand. No system is perfect and the existence of AG champs does not necessarily give us a better environment to nurture… Read more »
That’s not so different from the US system, which runs the junior nationals a week after the senior nationals, at the same pool. It’s not that unusual for swimmers to do both meets.
I agree with your comment.
I have always thought it ridiculous that many of the SNC Junior Teams were chosen at the SENIOR Nats. Perhaps that is why swimmers competed in both. I agree still not the best system and it potentially made AGNs redundant.
Any meet that calls itself a National meet and then has to run sessions double ended to get through in a reasonably amount of time is ridiculous.
I heard a comment that the qualifying times for AGN were so low (lower than many provinces’ provincial times) so all provinces could send swimmers who qualify. By raising the bar you would be excluding some provinces’ swimmers. Oh well. Then swim faster! I don’t… Read more »
Well at least the Canadians have a National Age group champs. Something the US is slow in moving on.
Interesting that Swimming Canada chose not to comment.
As well, this will most likely deter youth from continuing in the sport, which will in turn trickle down to the grass roots level where parents will stop registering their kids in the sport, and on the other end, will also take away from the university programs.
Such a shame that while most clubs are looking at ways to grow their club base (in various forms – competitive/non competitive), The NSO has decided to make such a bold wrong decision which is obvious when data shows a 43% decrease from 2012 to 2013 for age group nationals.
And…although we need to be competitive with other nations, we also need to ensure… Read more »
As a Canadian parent, the 2013 change was a good one and long overdue. Age group nationals should be for elite top-performing swimmers only. There are more than enough regional and provincial meets for non-qualifying swimmers. We are not doing elite athletes any service by having them sit through 30 prelim heats waiting to race. If Swimming Canada’s goal is truly to better prepare elite swimmers for the possibility of international competition, then they have to start weeding swimmers out at some point. If you don’t at least start at the age group level, when do you?
They could have accomplished the same thing by simply lowering the qualifying standards and not requiring swimmers to qualify for 3 events. The point of having bonus events is to allow athletes to become multi-event swimmers by trying to improve their 2nd & 3rd best events when they’re rested and tapered.
By the way, I just have to point out the omission of Becky Smith, Cheryl Gibson and Graham Smith as former elite Canadian swimmers. At one point, they all swam for the Edmonton Olympians and all won medals at the 1976 Olympics.