Upcoming Championship Meets

Good morning, I wanted to reach out to everyone and let everyone know a little more about our Championship Season. While there are dozens of different “Championship” caliber meets, I wanted to touch base with everyone on the meets we will be attending this year and why I like these for our program at this point.

Region Championship Meet (8&Under Champs)

Region Championship is a local competition and was once pushed as the 8&Under Championship for the younger athletes who are generally too early in the process to qualify for the big team event “Southeastern Championship.” At Region Championship, our biggest competition will usually be BSL out of Birmingham and the growing Opelika. There are no qualifying standards for this meet.

For our older athletes new to the sport, this is often used as a great meet for some great swims and a “Last Chance” meet to qualify for the Southeastern Championship.

Southeastern Championship (Winter and Summer)

Southeastern Championships are the big team meets that we work towards each year. There are qualifying times for this meet and it is often a lengthy process to approve the qualifying times as we work with all teams in our LSC including teams from Alabama, Tennessee, and the panhandle of Florida. We have just recently approved the qualifying times for this meet and have included time standards in both Long Course Meters (LCM) and Short Course Yards (SCY) to allow more athletes into this high caliber meet.

There are two Southeastern Championship Meets (SES) each year– one that has been renamed as “Winter Southeastern Championship” in February and the “Summer Southeastern Championship” in July. These two meets will have different time standards in both SCY and LCM but athletes should be able to chase these times both in the winter and summer regardless if they do summer league or not.

In the past, ARPA has not allowed athletes to compete for a team in both summer league and USA Swimming, but has recently come around to the idea of allowing athletes to do both as it was holding back the athletes long term progression in sport. RCSL has always been accommodating and worked well with the scheduling of Summer SES.

Most years, we anticipate close to 50% of the team to qualify for this meet. With such a large number of athletes moving up in age groups, we hope to still have 30%+ qualify. Please view these time standards under Events>Winter Southeastern Championship and talk with your athletes about what it will take to get to that next level!

Best of the South (14&Unders)

This is a newer meet that is replacing another meet of the same caliber known as “Age Group Sectionals.” The teams attending Best of the South feel it is a more exciting meet for the younger athletes and there are more celebrations including walkout songs for the final heat, fireworks, music, and more.

The qualifying standards for this meet is usually a little faster than the Southeastern Championship time standards but have not been released yet. They will be added under events and posted on the bulletin board when we receive these.

ISCA Senior Cup (13&Overs)

ISCA (International Swim Coaches Association) hosts a series of meets around the country. This is similar or the same level of competition as NCSA Junior Nationals. I prefer ISCA as it is a less crowded, exciting meet in a great location (St.Petersburg, FL), and the hosts generally have speakers collaborate with coaches and athletes on different aspects of the sport including sports psychologists, physiologists, and proclaimed expert coaches from Canada, US, and other areas around the globe. The athletes I’ve had the chance to take to both prefer ISCA as a better experience and more likely to get a second swim (finals) with similar high end athletes.