With a lot of confusion roaming around about why Cal’s Fabio Gimondi won’t get credited with the 42.83 that he swam at the Georgia Tech Last Chance meet, we were contacted by Joel Shinofield, the Executive Director of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America with some more information.
Specifically, Joel sent us a document that is called the “2013 Championship Qualification Meet Criteria” that governs all meets, to the exception of conference championship meets, within 10 days of the application deadline. In other words: Last Chance Meets. It explains why Gimondi’s swim, in his second Last Chance event, wasn’t credited.
Within is the following clause [items in brackets are our additions]:
Each student-athlete is permitted to qualify in only one championship qualification meet [read: Last Chance Meet]. If a student-athlete participates in more than one championship qualification meet, results for that student-athlete from the second meet [in this case, Georgia Tech] will not be eligible for championships qualification.
This ruling doesn’t appear in the championship pre-selection handbook or the 2012-2013 Swimming & Diving rulebook, anywhere that we’ve found at least, which would explain why so many were having trouble tracking it down. That likely costs Cal Gimondi’s services as an individual qualifier, which will hurt as he had individual scoring potential. He should still be going as a relay only qualifier.
Thanks to Joel and the CSCAA for helping solve the mystery.
My personal feeling is they shouldn’t even be allowed one last chance meet. Come on. You have all season to qualify. Why keep giving extra chances. Should a basketball player be given a second chance to make a missed free throw? Or a baseball play an extra strike after a strike out? What’s the difference?
So people are finally following the rules – REFRESHING!!! I’m sure it’s a shock for the Pac-12.
I’m just going to say that Gimondi’s absence in individual events will NOT be the difference in the outcome of the meet.
Unless this document is somehow linked and incorporated by reference in the rules that apply to the NCAA rule book on who qualifies for the NCAA championships, I do not see how the “Championship Qualification ***Meet Criteria*** ” can be used to establish the NCAA Championship Individual Qualifying Criteria. Why would the qualifying rules be anywhere else? Other than this one paragraph (and maybe the one after it about no more than 3 attempts per day), the rest of the document appears to be the rules on how to run the meet. If there is no reference to this document in the regular rules, I think I would have a pretty good case to prevent application of this qualifying “rule.”
The PAC 12 “Invitational” was clearly billed as such, and differentiated from time trials that morning.
It was well known to swimmers that it was the last chance “invite” that is normally scheduled after the meet, moved up to prior first events of because of pool scheduling issues.
While it might be that the rule wasn’t openly published, I agree with the swim mom and more from a financial standpoint: the big conferences can swing multiple last chance meets financially, but it’s not a level playing field for smaller D-1 schools who can’t afford to fly their swimmers to 3 last chance meets on the other side of the country.
From that standpoint, I don’t think that… Read more »
Shrimp N Grits is totally right. It is fair. If the qualifying criteria for NCAAs was achievement of a certain time standard rather than placement, I would agree that it is OK to let people try as many times as they like. But it isn’t fair to those swimmers on the bubble who go to schools that aren’t able or willing to send their swimmers all over the country. Remember, because he is out, another swimmer who played by the rules is in. I was at the meet that Sunday; it is hard to imagine that any coach who was there didn’t understand the program.
Sounds like the NCAA is just trying to unfairly even out the playing field…
What about other conference that had people swim the morning of their 200 medley/800 free relay day? This kid swam the morning of his conference starting date. So did a bunch of others. SEC obviously had people swimming the morning of their 200/800.
http://www.secdigitalnetwork.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=zY6ZrKiqQ6c=&tabid=722&mid=5612
So all of these swimmers can’t count future last chance meets because they swam the morning of their conference? Conferences have been doing that for years. This kid swam the morning of his conference as did many others… Difference? Difference is that these random rules are here and the pac12 men should have called their morning time trials exactly that, time trials. But since they swam after girls… Read more »
Everyone thinking there’s ambiguity here should go back and re-read the rule. Seems pretty black and white to me leaving nothing to interpretation. That said, I don’t agree with it but imagine the uproar if this went unnoticed.
If this wasn’t included in the official rulebook, I think calling this document a “rule” is dubious.
This has been a rule/standard/policy for quite awhile, and parent… is right on. How much money/time can programs spend on last chances? Perhaps the confusion is timing and venue. Since you can time trial at conferences, mayhaps it’s hard to interpret “time trials” the morning BEFORE the start of conferences, at the conference site, as a separate last chance meet. Conferences hadn’t technically started, right? Throw in the confusion over the date and location of Men’s PAC 12s due to Belmont Plaza and you’ve got a mess. But, the rule’s the rule, and it’s not new.
Actually there was no confusion whatsoever that the meet on Sunday prior to Pac12’s was a last chance meet. There were prelims and finals and the event was called an Invitational. It wasn’t well attended but I seriously doubt anyone could remotely get it confused with time trials at the Pac12’s.
Oh really? I’d never heard of it until now. Maybe that’s because it never came up until now. Still, the document provided in SwimSwam’s article above concerns the 2013 championship. Have you seen a similar document from previous years? Is that rule in the 2012-2013 NCAA swimming & diving rulebook? Just curious where you’ve heard of it before.