Details for Upcoming Championship Meets
Notes on our Championship meet formats: (Bear with us... a lot has changed and it can be confusing!)
The Arkansas Swimming Championships have officially moved to the first weekend of March. The regional will be two weeks before on the 16th and 17th of February. I will post meet information as soon as I get it. Since a few people have asked so that they could make plans, I thought I had better send this out so everyone is aware of some major changes.
Qualifying times are at this link. Please be aware that just because an event is listed with a Q time, this does not guarantee the event will be offered at either championship meet. http://www.teamunify.com/mvjckw/__eventform__/277642_State%20Qualifying%20Times%20Proposal.pdf
The new Regional championships will not be prelim/finals. They will be timed finals but they will offer more events than the championship meet. The Regional is like the B championship in the Tri-State summer league in that it has no qualifying times, but swimmers may not participate in any event in which they have already qualified for the ASI Championship. (*with exceptions-- keep reading.) Swimmers are not allowed to enter with an NT. They must have swam the event in a meet during the season without disqualifying. This way the Regional serves as a last chance meet for ASI Champs.
At ASI Champs some events have been added to the Friday evening session. In the past, the 200’s of the strokes and the 400 IM were time trials, but now they will be offered Friday night and will be scored. They also are offered for ages 11-18 and will be scored by age group, meaning that within the 11-18 200 fly, there will be an 11-12, a 13-14 and a 15-18 champion and their points in their age group will count toward high point awards and team scores.
The 50’s of the strokes for 11-12 and the 100’s of the strokes for 10 & under are still not offered at ASI Champs but will now be offered at the Regional with no “slower than” time limit. This means that even if a swimmer has made the ASI Championship Q time in that event, since it is missing from the ASI champs meet lineup, they can swim it at the Regional no matter how fast they are. I think this will help some of our high achieving swimmers to have another chance to turn in a best time in those “missing events” before the season ends. The list of events also includes a 10 & under 500 freestyle at the Regional for those swimmers ambitious enough to go for it!
Relays at ASI Champs are also going to mirror tri-state rules in that we are allowed to pull in swimmers who are not individually qualified to fill spots in the A relay only. To enter a B relay our team must have 8 swimmers in that age group individually qualified, for a C relay we must have 12, and so on. Hopefully this rule will alleviate some of the crowding and will level the playing field a bit. Last year some of the Little Rock teams were entering E and F relays that were scoring!
I have posted the proposed qualifying times for the ASI championships on the meet landing page, and hopefully there will be no more changes. When the final order of events and meet information are posted I will load them quickly so that families can start submitting entries and making travel plans to Springdale and hopefully Little Rock. I hope we see some new qualifying times turned in at MSA and at the Regional.
Go Killer Whales!
