What are Junior Nationals and Futures?
A swimmer's USA Swimming path begins at the state-level Junior Olympics (JOs) meet, progresses to Zones and Sectionals, and then moves onto the “national” stage at Junior Nationals and the new-ish Futures Championships. The graphic above summarizes the overall path to the top -- The Olympics.
Starting in 2003, USA Swimming began to see a 40% increase in the number of 13 & over swimmers (i.e., an increase of 44,000 athletes). This growth has caused two related problems:
(i) USA Swimming’s winter and summer Junior National meets have reached maximum capacity; and
(ii) to limit the size of these meets, USA Swimming has to make it more difficult to qualify for them.
This created an additional issue. Making the qualifying times for Junior Nationals faster has moved them farther away from qualifying times for Sectionals and, therefore, closer to the cuts for the National Championships. This makes it harder for swimmers to make the jump from Sectionals to Junior Nationals (and easier to go from Junior Nationals to Nationals).
To better manage the size of Junior Nationals and the ability of swimmers to smoothly progress from Sectionals to Junior Nationals, USA Swimming did the following:
- They split the short course Winter Junior Championships into two meets, one for the eastern United States and the other for the western half of the country (SJA participates in the East Junior Nationals Meet);
- They kept the long course Summer Junior Championships meet; and,
- They created a new summer “Futures Championships” meet (Futures) that provides swimmers with a new stepping stone between Sectionals and Junior Nationals. Some think of this Futures meet as a “junior” Junior Nationals.
You can find qualifying times for all of these meets at the USA Swimming Time Standards Page: https://www.usaswimming.org/Home/times/time-standards. They are updated annually.
