Liberty Last Chance Meet
- March 1st-3rd, 2019
- Lynchburg, Virginia
- 25y, prelims/finals
- Day 1 results
The 2nd-annual Liberty Last Chance meet, which hopes to avoid the controversy that swirled last year, kicked off on Friday. The 2018 edition of the meet resulted in 5 NCAA qualifying times from women swimmers, though we don’t know for sure if those times were done with faulty timing equipment. A pair of East Carolina men also earned NCAA qualifying times at the meet, but those times were invalidated after the NCAA ruled that the presence of multiple women’s teams was not sufficient for a bona fied competition for the men, and so their times were wiped out of the qualifying list.
The latter of those issues won’t be a problem this year. While East Carolina didn’t return for this year’s meet, NC State and Virginia both sent men’s and women’s swimmers, ensuring the minimum level of participation for bona fied competition.
All that being said, there were no times swum on Friday that are likely to be NCAA invites. Among the noteworthy results:
- NC State sophomore Danika Huizinga (1:54.09) and junior Mackenzie Glover (1:54.20) both improved their season bests in the 200 backstroke. Huizinga now ranks 11th in the ACC in that event this season. Andrew Mering estimates that it will take around a 1:53.5 to qualify for NCAAs in that event this season. Friday’s swim was just a time trial, technically, so they could reswim it in prelims and finals on Sunday to chase qualifying times if they wanted to.
- NC State’s Lexie Lupton, who didn’t swim at ACCs, swam prelims of the 50 free in 23.07 and a 100 free time trial in 49.81. Neither time will qualify for NCAAs, but those swims are probably going to factor in when the Wolfpack is making relay decisions for NCAAs. Her 100 free ranks 4th on the team this season. She swam on both NC State sprint relays at NCAAs last year.