2024 Ohio State Last Chance Qualifier – Men
- Sunday, March 10, 2024
- McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
- Short Course Yards (25 yards)
- Full Meet Results
Ohio State 5th-year Chachi Gustafson qualified for his 5th-straight NCAA Championship meet on Sunday at the Ohio State Last Chance qualifier.
Gustafson swam 1:41.47 in the 200 fly prelims on Sunday morning before scratching the final. That’s 1.1 seconds better than the 1:42.57 that was invited to last year’s NCAA Championship meet.
Pending any last-minute last-chance swims, that time jumps him to 20th in the NCAA this season. With 28-30 swimmers usually invited in each event, he should be safely on to the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis in March.
Gustafson finished 6th at the 2023 Big Ten Championships in the 200 fly in 1:43.21, but the bar was raised this year, and even with a 1:42.98 in finals, he placed only 8th.
At last year’s NCAA Championship meet, he just-missed scoring with a 1:42.52 in prelims for 19th place. It took 1:42.24 to make it back to the B-Final.
Gustafson’s lifetime best is a 1:41.39 that was done at a Last Chance meet in 2022.
His was the only new likely qualifying time out of the abbreviated, one-day Last Chance event. Men’s initial pre-selection psych sheets are expected out Tuesday morning, with the official invites going out on Wednesday.
I’m not a fan of these last chance meets. Who’s with me?
I think basically everyone aside from the teams that routinely benefit from them dislikes them. Hard to see them changing, though, because every coach wants that *possibility* of sneaking a kid in when they need to.
If you look at the stats, making a cut at a last-chance meet is quite rare. But a rested swim can make all the difference for those whose top event falls on the last day of their conference champs (2 back, 2 fly, 2 breast, 1650). Some swimmers will swim a time trial at the beginning of the conference meet to get a rested swim. This is just another way of doing that…
“Like Chachi and Joani, she’s the cheese and I’m the macaroni.”
Is there a last chance meet/time trial for teams that participated in Pac 12?
There is on MeetMobile, but no results have been posted yet