Last week, we reported that the U.S. Masters Nationals would be seeing an appearance by Olympian Anthony Ervin. With psych sheets now released, it appears he’ll be bringing some other big names along with him.
Tom Shields, Nathan Adrian and Darian Townsend are among the notables competing at the meet, which is scheduled to run from May 1 to May 4 in Santa Clara, California.
Shields, now one full year removed from his outstanding collegiate career, will head up his signature butterfly events, while Olympic gold medalist Adrian will challenge Ervin in the sprints, though the two are separated by age category (Ervin swims 30-34 while Adrian is still in the 25-29 bracket). Townsend, the 29-year-old South African Olympian, continues to improve with age and has become a powerhouse at various USA Swimming meets as of late, including big swims at the Orlando Grand Prix and Winter Nationals.
The Masters meet’s California location seems to be a popular one for a number of graduates from California colleges who are continuing their post-grad careers. That list includes national teamer and Stanford grad BJ Johnson, former Cal Bears William Copeland and Nolan Koon, plus 2013 Stanford grad Andrew Saeta.
And joining that whole crew on the psych sheets are a pair of living legends. The great Matt Biondi, who dominated the American sprint scene in the 80s and 90s, will be competing in the 45-49 age group. Meanwhile 35-year-old former Olympic gold medalist Misty Hyman is entered in some backstroke and butterfly races at the meet. The Cal/Stanford theme lives on even in the upper age brackets, as Hyman starred for the Cardinal during her college years and Biondi competed for Cal-Berkeley.
Forget those other pikers, I heard Patrick Brundage is going to be there!
What’s interesting is that the meet info sheet states “Swimmers wishing to have times entered into SWIM (USA Swimming times database) must complete a form at the meet prior to the swim”.
I was always told that times from Masters meets did not and could not count for USA Swimming unless the meet had a double sanction (masters and USA Swimming) and both sanction numbers appeared on the meet entry form. Only the masters sanction appears on the form.
Once again double standards for different LSC’s or certain LSC’s discriminating against specific individuals? Or maybe some LSC’s have “too many swimmers” so they make-up rules as they go along.
This practice has been in place at all Masters Nationals I have been in for the last few years, so this is not anything special for this LSC. Masters swimmers will still need to be registered as well with USAS to avail themselves of this. Think of this as the same approach high school kids use to get their HS times into SWIMS.
This is going to be one big, fun, fast meet.
I believe Pacific Swimming (and perhaps all other LSC’s) do things different from SCS. The same thing happened to my kids at the Community College Conference Championships in Southern California. The meets aren’t observed therefore, the times can’t be used in USA Swimming meets. I contacted the President of the CCCAA association for swim and dive and she told me that she didn’t understand where the problem was. She wrote, “All coaches were notified at our conference meet that all we had to do was to complete a form with the swimmer’s name and USA reg#, and their times would be recognized by USA Swimming”. It turned out she coached at a conference in Northern California and was unable to… Read more »
Why oh why did I not go to Nationals thus year! !!