Swimmers aren’t the type of athletes that get into fights all the time. We’re a fairly civilized breed of athletes so to speak, but mess with our swim meets and it’ll get ugly. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Assosiation (MIAA) cancelled their Sectional meets this weekend due to the huge snowstorm. Swimmers all over Massachusetts are not happy and are taking all the energy they have from their tapers and putting it into fighting this cancellation.
Sarah Breland took her anger to twitter and formed the “Bring Back MA Sec” twitter account (@bringbackMAsec). Breland tried to contact the MIAA herself but was shocked when she received a cold reply.
“I had directly emailed the MIAA with my story this morning,” Breland recounted. “Moments later I got an automatic response basically stating that they don’t care about the parents or athlete’s emails. They said that they only want to hear from Principals and Athletic Directors; both of mine had emailed them.”
Swimmers like Breland have been fighting and getting some high level support from the likes of American Olympians Ryan Lochte, Missy Franklin, Conor Dwyer, Allison Schmitt, and Katie Ledecky on twitter. Partly from their support the MIAA has decided to reinstate the West sectional meet, great news for the west swimmers but the east swimmers are still fighting for their right to swim.
Simon Rogers has been swimming for Malden High School for three years and as a senior, this meet would have been his last sectionals ever. Unfortunately Rogers was told by his highschool coach that he and his team wouldn’t have a chance to compete at the meet, and that it was cancelled for good. Rogers said, “It was devastating to hear that we had worked so hard all season for this, and now it wasn’t going to happen. The meet was not postponed like some events for other sports, so swimmers on my team who had made times that allowed them to swim in Massachusetts sectionals but not for states would have nothing to go to now, their season was essentially over.”
Take a minute to remember your swimming days. Imagine you trained all your life for one meet, one chance, envisioned it all your life and then one day it was cancelled. For swimmers like Simon Rogers, unless this meet is reinstated, it might mean the end of their swimming careers.
I urge the swimmers to continue their fight to the right to swim, and as swimmers we know that they’ll fight until that last inch.
They should keeping striving to get their meet in as they were prepared. The previous article on their problem had the differences of how every state is different.
In New Jersey you wouldn’t have these problems. All the states (49) would’t have some of the problems talked about.
New Jersey says your all wrong as the way to do it to have dual meet playoffs with 5 extra dual meets to be state champ team. Reschedule easy only needing an hr and a half on next Mon or Tues.. Then spread the wealth ha A and B Div and then split the public and Catholic/private schools with girls and boys you have 8 team champs. Now the top swimmers don’t have rest or taper as they don’t face all the best in dual meets. Also takes care of those people who are negative about Missy swimming as in a dual meet they dilute her by 2-3-4th place finishes hard to do in a meet where all the best go at it like all states HS and all Div I,II and III and all conferences. This is the real team concept when in a where all the first few rounds are easy meets and when there is a close meet it is decided by the B relays and the swimmers in Lane 5 and 6. These are the real team importance. Now this keeps all the club and Y coaches pleased as the only problem are missing of some practices. Then you hold a championship format meet to end the season with standards and no score kept. This then makes it easier for some to skip the meet, say a hour half trip or two is to far to travel for a meet. Those who live nearby can do a two hour workout at the club then go down the road to the meet. No need to rest or even contiplate shaving. Now some relays and some individuals come ready to swim. This would also help the Colorado people as you can show 5 minutes before the start of finals and plenty of seats about a third empty out of 500 seating. Pennsylvania would’t have to get tickets early or prove they are connected to the team in the meet. Works great for me each year walk in and stand right at the finish line in the stands no problems. now you can do it by not letting any one know that it isn’t done any where else as many questioned Nat and Jr Nat swimmers are surprised to hear you all do it different. Such an easier team way and the top swimmers don’t have to swim each other.the club coaches say it is fine and the HS coaches like thevTeam way of doing it with those B and lane 5 and sixes. Solves a lot of problems doesn’t it and you don’t have to worry about reporting as many All American certificates.
I believe there is a total travel ban via roads in large parts of MA. A decree by Gov Deval Patrick .
Lots of people are making fun of it , but it brings a 12 month prison sentence .
Is a swim meet really that important to disobey a (surprising but real ) directive?
jg, yes, our roads are closed. ths issue with the sectional cancelation is two fold: all other sports cancelled by the blizzard have been re-scheduled with the exception of swimming. western mass was able to have the meet re-secheduled to monday/tuesday *but* those times do not qualify for states (next weekend). the other 3 areas have not been able to have their sectional rescheduled to this week despite pool willingness of some of the universities.
swimmers were stuffed by the state and yet the other sectionals were all rescheduled – that is the issue.
excellent summary! I felt sure that some universities would help to reschedule these events. There are plenty with pools. And yes track and wrestling are getting rescheduled….whats up with that!
Uh, these…protesters? want to reschedule the meets, not still have them today. The Western meet was rescheduled, which is the one that makes the most sense. I’m crunching some numbers right now, will post again in a minute.
It’s not about disobeying a directive, its about working with the schools and student athletes to find a solution. They deserve to finish their season as planned not because it might be too difficult for the organization to work towards a possible alternative.
the ban will be lifted soon. the sun is out.
We just want it to be rescheduled. Make our states sectionals and find a different date for states. Plus we living in New England where there should always be a back plan thats ready for action.
My brother, his high school, and many of my good friends are affected by this Sectional cancellation. People are upset that it is cancelled, rather than postponed. Of course we do not want to go against Deval Patrick and drive in these dangerous conditions. What we want is the meet rescheduled as soon as possible. If what I have heard is correct, only one other sport had a cancellation of a meet or game, that would be a winter track meet, and the rest were postponed. This is very upsetting to our swimming community. Yes, pool space can be hard to find, but it is not impossible and we should get the same respect and recognition as other sports.
The most upsetting part is the loss of a meet where high school swimmers get to swim their hearts out! Yes, there is still States for some, but for many this could be the last meet of the year, or for seniors, their last meet ever. At my own Sectionals this past Fall Season, I dropped tremendous amounts of time in my 100 fly for Second place and I placed 6th in the 100 back. This Sectionals meet is what set me up for the State meet, where I swam the same events and became the Division 2 State Champion in both. I cannot bare to see that opportunity taken away from someone else. Teams have prepared for this and tapered for this. This is a cause I hope to see through, to see action taken for all parts of Massachusetts! Bring Back All Sectionals! And I hear even New Hampshire needs their meets back as well!
I was curious how many kids actually are gettin’ bumped from events because of these cancellations; it was a lot more than I initially expected. Just counted up how many entrants there were in each event, how many kids were entered w/o times that would qualify them for the state meet and the percentage of kids in each event.
Spreadsheet I made is uploaded here. I think that link’ll work…if not let me know and I can like, email it to you or something. I also didn’t check it too closely, I literally just counted things…too lazy to automate it.
Of the meets that weren’t rescheduled, there were 951 individual entries. 244 have not qualified for the state meet, which is 26% of all entries. In terms of relays, there were 309 entries for the four non-rescheduled meets. 72 of them have not qualified for the state meet (288 total kids) for 23% of all entries.
I see how it might be a pain to reschedule the meets, but both the South/Central and North meets were scheduled to happen at the same pool. (Lol, I never realized how weird that is, too.) Instead of just saying “Nope, too hard to figure out, lalallaala” and canceling them all, couldn’t the MIAA have worked something else out? I literally thought of this as I was writing that last sentence – have all the kids with sectional cuts only swim at one meet, together. Some events would be kind of empty, but plenty of others would have like, three heats. If ya push back the girls state meet to next Sunday, you could do this proto-sectional meet next Saturday, the day before both state meets. (Because no one wants to do this on a weeknight, I’d assume.) Sure, finding pool time could be hard, but I’m sure there’s SOMEWHERE in the area that’d want to help accommodate these kids.
Also, don’t scroll down too far on the Bring Back MA Sec. twitter account. Actually, I take that back, please do – the transition in subject matter once you get to stuff posted longer than 24 hours ago is pretty fantastic. (Ms. Breland appears to be a fan of One Direction. And I mean, who can blame her!?)
I need an extra strength Advil to cure headache after taking your advice and reading her twitter feed…the stuff before her meet was cancelled. Not sure why, but feel like downloading Emblem 3 and One Direction….maybe buying a pepsi. When is X factor back on the air?
Whoa, where did all the comments on this post go? I guess I’ll re-post?
I made a spreadsheet looking at the kids who’ve qualified for sectionals but not for states. View / download here.
Turns out there are a lot more kids than I initially expected, about 25% of kids in the four meets that haven’t been rescheduled yet.
As I was winging my last post, I thought of just moving the girls state meet (currently scheduled for the 16th, next Saturday) back a day, and then just swimming all the sectional qualifiers w/o state cuts all together somewhere on Saturday and holding all the state meets the next day. But it is a hell of a lot easier to just cancel the meets and be done with it, as the MIAA decided. I spent three seconds thinking of that suggestion – so maybe they did too and it just wasn’t feasible, but damn, they could’ve at least pretended to be trying.
Oh, well, there they are. Now I just look silly.
No one expected anybody to travel on Saturday (the roads don’t open until 2 pm)….the proposed solution was to run ALL of the meets on Sunday. In the North Central/South districts the MIT pool is booked for Sunday. The original plan is run 10 lanes Girls (2 districts) Sat and Boys (2 districts) on Sunday. One solution is to run 20 lanes (this is routine for NE Swimming Championships) and North (Boys/Girls) in the AM and Central/South (Boys/Girls) in the PM. You might have to eliminate the awards ceremony but it should work within the timeline.
We need our voices heard. All Swimmers and non-swimmers unite. This meet means a lot to everyone especially to the seniors, if they didn’t qualify for states this is their last chance to try!
The MIAA should have had a back up plan. I respect their descion to cancel the meet for the safety for all of the swimmers, families, coaches, and others. But they have not bothered to try to come up with a new plan of action. For some seniors it was their last chance to make states but now they will not be able to end their season on the high note they wanted. We have trained so hard for this moment only to get it taken away.
The roads are fine now. They could have had the boys sectionals tomorrow (sunday) and could have added the girls into it.
Note: New Hampshire held their swimming championships today.
Harvard held it re-scheduled meet versus Penn today.
MIAA did not see fit to run their Sectional Meet at MIT today (pool was booked)
Wrong about Harvard….meet pushed back to Saturday February 16th.
a few years ago, in Texas, several of the regional swim meets (which were qualifying meets for the State meet) had to be postponed for a week. The swimmers were all disappointed, but the coaches ratcheded up their yardage and they stayed ready to race. Usually, all 8 regions race on the same 2 days; however, in this case, I think about 3-4 regions had to move to the following weekend with State the following weekend (rather than the 2 week gap as usual). That was tough – but most did well. To have a meet cancelled and not postponed is completely unfair to the swimers. Fight on!