SwimSwam sat down with the coaches behind the upcoming Dual Meet Tournament that will take place at Georgia Tech on October 17-18, 2025. Chico Rego of George Washington, Iago Moussalem of Georgia Tech, Cauli Bedran of Wisconsin (who is not participating in the tournament), and Steve Barnes of Florida State all contributed to this discussion and laid out how this event came together, what it will look like, and how they hope it will impact college swimming moving forward.
The format of the Tournament is as follows:
*All Duals will be 90 minutes with a 10-minute “halftime” break*
- On Friday Morning (Oct 17), there will be four duals (Quarter finals): Two run simultaneously at 7:30am, then two more at 10am
- On Friday Afternoon, there will be another four duals (Semi Finals + Losers Bracket): Two run at 3pm (Winners and Losers from 7:30am Matchups), then two more at 6pm (Winners and Losers from 10am Matchups)
- On Saturday Morning (Oct 18), there will be three duals for the six teams that aren’t in the final
- On Saturday Afternoon at 2pm, there will be the Dual Meet Final
Diving will take place intermittently and will be more of a team event (more to come on that in the future). Roster limits per meet will be 15 swimmers and 2 divers per gender. Each swimmer can only swim 3 times per meet. Each team will have 4 athletes per individual swimming event and 2 relay teams per relay event.
Event Lineups for each meet are as follows:
- First half: Relay #1, (100 Free/Back & 200 Fly/Breast) OR (100 Fly/Breast & 200 Free/Back)
- Second half: 500 Free, 200 IM, 50 Free, Relay #2
The event lineup for each dual will be decided before the dual.
Scoring will be combined for genders. Each dual will have a total of 790 points (meaning the first team to reach 396 wins). Scoring is as follows:
- For diving/relays, 1st place is 22, 2nd place is 8, 3rd place is 4, and 4th place is 0.
- For Individual Swimming events, 1st place is 16, 2nd place is 6, 3rd place is 5, 4th place is 4, 5th place is 3, 6th place is 2, 7th place is 1, and 8th place is 0.
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This is nothing but awesome. Thinking back on my old mid-major team, we would’ve gone nuts for this. Props to the coaches making it happen.
Catering to the LCD is the only way to grow the sport, apparently 🙄 the reason swimming isn’t more popular: it’s hard work. It’s like questioning why roofing isn’t a more popular occupation. Most folks just aren’t cut out for it. The sooner y’all accept people are really only going to tune in every 4 years, we can move on from this rebranding charade. But in the meanwhile, more 50s and mixed relay gimmicks, please.
The scoreboard must have the running team scores (updated immediately). I would go a step further and say dont show times, just show places on the scoreboard. This shifts focus points like a basketball game scoreboard. Swimmer and diehard fans can look at times on meet mobile.
ISL experimented with the ‘no times’ bit and ultimately added them back. Winner’s time + gap seemed to be the middle ground.
I like not only instant score updates, but also displaying points-per-event, and maybe even an “individual scoring” leader board.
A 16 team end of season bracket style dual meet would be great for the sport
Alternate meet format:
200 medley relay
200 free
200 butterback
400 free relay
Done.
Alternate meet format but this time I’m actually serious:
200 medley relay
200 free
100 stroke (randomly selected each round)
400 free relay
Whole dual meet tournament done in a day
Comments already critiquing are super lame. Mistakes inevitable. Who cares.
A bunch of good dudes put together a great setup. Let it play out.
Could be great!
It would be concerning to me if the coaches are treating the feedback they get as “super lame.” The ISL took this approach, and it didn’t really work out for them.
The best reason to put this out into the world 6 months ahead of time is to gather feedback. Of course we can all ignore the “no version of a dual meet gimmick will ever work” crowd, but I think if folks have ideas about format, they should be at least considered.
Cool. Agree.
Looks awesome
Let’s wait and see how it plays out before deciding if it’s going to be what’s needed or not. Might be a win…might not be…
That’s the message that the organizers are sending as well. They just wanted to try something different. Which in itself is a win for swimming.