UPDATE: on Thursday afternoon, the Ivy League overturned the disqualifications and stopped using RJPs for the rest of the meet. Read more here. Original reporting is below.
2023 MEN’S IVY LEAGUE SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Wednesday, February 22 – Saturday, February 25, 2022
- Prelims 11:00 AM / Finals 6:00 PM
- Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, Brown University, Providence, RI
- Defending Champions: Harvard University
- Live Results on Meet Mobile
- Daily Results PDFs posted post-session here.
- Live Video (ESPN+)
- Championship Central
- Day 1 Finals Live Recap
…ouch.
On day one of the 2023 Men’s Ivy League Championships, a whopping four relays were DQed—Penn in the 200 medley relay, and Penn, Columbia, and Dartmouth in the 800 free relay. While the reasons for these DQs have not been made known publicly yet, their detrimental effects have already been showing.
First off, Penn is currently sitting at the bottom of the standings, with zero points. Columbia and Dartmouth, who both got DQed solely in the 800 free relay, are in sixth and seventh respectively.
TEAM SCORES AFTER DAY 1
- Harvard / Princeton – 120
- –
- Yale – 106
- Brown / Cornell – 100
- –
- Columbia – 54
- Dartmouth – 46
- Penn – 0
Surely enough, it’s only day one, so there are going to be plenty of opportunities for Penn, Columbia, and Dartmouth to catch up and earn points. But there’s no denying that these DQs will change the team battle of this meet dramatically. Just from last year, Penn beat Brown for third by 90 points and Brown beat Columbia by 57 points. In other words, the 50 or so relay points lost from a DQ could move a team down one, or even two, places in a close meet.
These DQs obviously are going to hurt Penn the most. They touched 5th in the 200 medley relay and 7th in the 800 free relay. Had they not been DQed, they would have earned 94 points. So now, with the 90-point gap between Penn and Brown from last year essentially being erased, the Quakers are in a much more precarious position, and will have work to do to make up for their night one losses.
What Team Scores Would Have Been, Without the DQs
| Team – HYPOTHETICAL | 200 medley relay points | 800 free relay points |
Total Hypothetical Points
|
|
| 1 | Harvard | 64 | 56 | 120 |
| 1 | Princeton | 56 | 64 | 120 |
| 3 | Yale | 52 | 54 | 106 |
| 3 | Columbia | 54 | 52 | 106 |
| 5 | Cornell | 48 | 48 | 96 |
| 5 | Brown | 46 | 50 | 96 |
| 7 | Penn | 50 | 44 | 94 |
| 8 | Dartmouth | 44 | 46 | 90 |
There was some relay DQ controversy at last week’s Ivy League Women’s Championship meet as well. The Dartmouth women, for example, had two DQ’ed relays, including one where the touchpad registered +.14 for the disqualified swimmer.
While the Ivy League included information on who left early and reaction times in last week’s results, after that controversial call, the information has been removed from the men’s results.
Update: Dartmouth DQ Questionable?
Below is a screenshot of the Dartmouth men’s 800 free relay exchange that was called for a DQ. The swimmer in the water is clearly on the wall and the swimmer on the block is still clearly on the block. In fact, it doesn’t even look like a particularly-fast exchange.
In this case, the RJP did register a negative reaction time, indicating that there might be a problem with the equipment.
(click to enlarge)
FYI – ALL DQs from yesterday were reversed. Wild to do that 24 hours after the event. Updated on MM
Refer to NCAA Swimming and Diving Rules, Rule 4-14-6 (pages 41-42 of the current book).
c. If the electronic relay takeoff equipment detects an exchange differential (takeoff pad time minus finish pad time) of –0.09 through +0.09 second inclusive from the manufacturer’s starting point, the decision(s) of the human judge(s) shall not be considered. The determination of the electronic relay takeoff equipment shall be official, with exchange differential of –0.09 through –0.01 second from the manufacturer’s starting point indicating a rules violation and values of 0.00 through +0.09 second indicating a legitimate relay exchange.
d. If the electronic relay takeoff equipment records an exchange differential outside of the range –0.09 through +0.09 second from the manufacturer’s starting point, a disqualification… Read more »
Also refer to rule 4-14-7, “Electronic Equipment Video Review.” Any video review must be a camera system setup specifically for that purpose ahead of the meet. I.e., it does not matter what your camera in the stands shows. The referee is not permitted to look at that video to overrule a takeoff call.
Without using official video review, the rules are somewhat vague as to how the referee can have “clear evidence” that the system has failed.
Also noticing how the rule book assumes all officials are men.
In my opinion, the rule is a bit contradictory. Because while it says that the official can’t use dad-cam to overrule a call…it does say that if the official has evidence that there is a touchpad malfunction, they can invalidate the RJP results. It is not specific on what that evidence can and cannot be.
So if the call was made based on RJP, it should be overturnable based on this video.
No, you cannot do that. That is no different than saying “We only have two officials, so we will only watch take-offs for lanes 1-4. Nobody will watch lanes 5-8 and they get a free pass.”
Also – that picture doesn’t show you anything that is actually conclusive. Where does it actually show hand-on-wall? It does not. You infer hand-on-wall based on lots of other things happening. You see the body, you see some splashing, etc. But you can’t see the hand, and you can’t see the wall. Everything else is all inference. That’s why video review cameras are mounted overhead looking down, and not way off to the side where you can’t actually see anything.
I’m not at… Read more »
Damn we found the Ivy League head referee lol.
Nope, just someone who knows a thing or two about NCAA rules.
Similar situation in ’08 at the Women’s meet – Goodwill Games pool on Long Island. The facility was trash back then, as were the pads (and the officials). 6 Relays DQ’ed on night one and the officials fervently demanded the results stand. Columbia and Princeton brought pads in from their pools to get through the meet. The idiot officials also missed the top seed in the 200 fly doing 5 strokes of doggy paddle as she choked on water in the middle of lane 4 at finals.It was special 🙂
I am a strong advocate of treating all officials with respect and letting age group officials alone, as they are volunteers and quite often expend their own time and finances on travel, training, and uniforms. Officiating college meets, however, especially championships, where they are paid by the conference, requires a heightened level of professionalism, duty and expectation. They should be held to a higher standard and penalized if they don’t meet it.
There’s a reason the officials stand on deck and not in the stands. The guy in the water could have easily not yet touched. The officials don’t have to raise their hands to call a DQ, especially in a relay — where they typically cover two lanes at a time. Everything has to be double confirmed as well.
Also, the 8 free relay is not won or lost by relay exchanges — no athlete (except MAYBE someone who is fighting for 1st place) should be pushing the exchanges there enough to trigger the electronic pads.
Everything does not have to be dual confirmed. And by rule, officials should not raise their hand until after the race.
As I mentioned in the other article’s comment section, these DQs seemed far too strange, especially for an 800FR relay, to not be the result of takeoff pad issues. That Dartmouth swimmer isn’t even remotely close to false starting.
Right, like what’re the odds you get three many DQ’s in any relay, let alone the “distance” relay?
If these are due to pad malfunctions, the situation could easily be remedied by a video inspection. The meet is being filmed on ESPN+, after all. I find it difficult to believe that so many teams could be DQ’ed due to false starts on an 800 Free Relay. I missed the real time feed but will anxiously await the video replays.
From what I can tell, and what word is saying around the meet, is that officials aren’t even bothering to call. They are just going with whatever the electronic timing system says. This is held up by both the Dartmouth photo, and the espn+ feed. Officials aren’t raising their hands and calling. I’m pretty sure the coaches have petitioned, so we’ll see what happens.
These pads also aren’t secured all the way on the block.
its lowkey a terribly run meet.
That meet has some of the best officials around-who would always fully vet all information before making a call. Officials do not raise their hands for relay exchange issues. I can tell you that they would have spoken to the officials watching the take-offs and confirmed it with the timing system. They are a top notch team. What I did notice was a lot of swimmers taking FOREVER to get out of the pool after they completed their leg – that throws off the timing system. Also – remember the issue we had a few years ago when swimmers weren’t always stepping over the fin to have one foot take off from the front of the block? That seems to… Read more »
I wonder if there’s a record for this. This meet would take the cake.
Yeah. Though in one race, I recall that at men’s 2007 NCAAs, three teams DQ’d in the 200 medley relay finals and I believe that they had finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th pre-DQ.
Felt shocking at the time and my young emotions actually thought for a moment – “wait…they are going to make an adjustment. There’s no way they will have this many relays be DQ’d.” But they did 🙂 And Stanford (?) was awkwardly bumped from 5th to 2nd for awards, if memory serves.