Dual Meet Tournament – Proposal #1

The Duel of Duals

What?

8 Women’s Teams

8 Men’s Teams

24 Dual Meets

3 Days

1 Champion per sex

Lots of cuts

Lots of excitement

Where?

I’ll set the stage with our host, the University of Chicago. While the seating is limited, you swim wall to wall and this swims you towards the crowd, adding to the excitement. It’s also in the Midwest, which is the hub of midseason rest meets.

Who?

Well UChicago is hosting, so they’ll be there. Kalamazoo, Hope and Olivet are in nearby Michigan, so they can make the trip. Carthage usually hosts a meet, but this is better, so they’ll swing down from Wisconsin. Also making the trip from the Cheese state will be UWSP. The “Show-Me” state also gets an entry since Wash U comes up for Wheaton and that’s just a suburban wannabe of Chicago. To round it out is St. Olaf. You might say this is a bit far away, but they usually go to the Carthage Invite, which is an hour away anyway. Welcome to the show, Olies. That makes 8.

Why?

Because it’s awesome.

But more to the point, midseason meets are boring and not the atmosphere where you get cuts. Also, as Greg Erhart, of Collegeswimming.com and Carthage College pointed out a couple of years ago, swimming needs it. Swimming currently has 1 meet to look forward to. Maybe you can count conference meets (and in D3, you can for the most part) but when the best swimmers aren’t resting, it’s hard to get overly excited about those.

Format? (Yeah, I ran out of W’s)

The teams get in on Thursday, as they do for several midseason meets, and swim the 1650 and 800 FR. This serves 2 purposes.

1. the 1650 time will be carried forward so distance swimmers don’t have to keep swimming that difficult events.
2. the 800 FR needs to be swum at some point for national purposes.

Thursday events will be swum in a non-dual fashion. However, there is excitement because this will determine the first event score moving forward.

The men and women will be ranked separately. I will rank them here, so it’s easiest to follow.

Men:

1. Kzoo
2. UWSP
3. WashU
4. Hope
5. Olaf
6. Chicago
7. Carthage
8. Olivet

(It should be noted that ALL of these teams are ranked currently)

Women:

1. UWSP
2. Carthage
3. WashU
4. Chicago
5. Hope
6. Kzoo
7. St. Olaf
8. Olivet

(Teams 1-6 all rank between 10 and 17, in the latest poll).

Friday, we run 2 meets at the same time…

1^st Duals:

8AM

Men:

Kzoo v Olivet, Hope v Olaf

Women:

UWSP v Olivet, Chicago v Hope

*you run these the same way you’d run a typical meet, women then men, only it might not be your own team now, and the pool is wide enough to go with 2, 8 lane pools

2^nd Duals:

11AM

(I don’t need to list the teams, as you get the concept)

*long format, but no 1000 (scored as 1650 finished) and diving takes place separately , also long relays

Now we move to a winners bracket and a losers bracket, so everyone can keep getting swims. This will essentially act as prelim/finals. You do not need to swim the same lineup.

3^rd Duals:

2PM

KvO winner v HvO winner, losers

Women’s winners and losers

4^th Duals

5PM

* long format again, but short relays

After Friday is finished you have a setup for 7^th place, 5^th place, 3^rd place and 1^st place for each gender.

Saturday morning, however, there will be no duals. This will be an open time trial session from 8-10:30AM. Most coaches won’t send swimmers to a meet unless they could swim events that may no necessarily help their team in the dual. This is completely optional for all participants and warmup will take place as well. The 400 IM would be swum at this time.

11AM

Men and Women 7^th places and 5^th places

2PM

Men and Women 3^rd places

5PM

Men and Women 1^st places

*long format, the higher seed picks the relay of their choice first, then the lower seed can pick the length of the other relay

So there it is. Is it perfect? No. But it gives us a place to start and something to talk about.