Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) – Men and Women
- Dates: Wednesday, February 25–Saturday, February 28
- Location: Deaconess Aquatic Center, Evansville, IN
- Defending Champions: Indiana State women (1x); Miami-OH (1x)
- Live Video
- Championship Central
- SwimSwam Fan Guide
- Teams: Ball State, Evansville, Illinois-Chicago*, Illinois State (women), Indiana State (women), Little Rock (women), Miami-OH (men), Missouri State, Northern Iowa (women), Southern Illinois, UIC, UMass (men)*, Valparaiso
An eagle-eyed reader noticed last week that the Southern Illinois women’s 200 medley relay was disqualified well after the event concluded. In fact, the official Championship Central page still lists them as the runners-up in the event in 1:40.02.
While they did touch the wall 2nd, an unusual disqualification cost the team a whopping 56 points: the wrong swimmer raced on the butterfly leg.
This situation is addressed under Rule 5 of the NCAA Swimming & Diving Rules Book.
Names of relay competitors must be submitted to the appropriate official at a designated time before the start of the race. Changes in names of participants are permitted up until the start of the event in that specific session (the start is considered to be when the referee calls the first heat of the event in that specific session to the starting blocks). When the actual contestants in a relay are different from those listed on the official relay entry form, the competing relay shall be disqualified and all athletes involved (competing and listed) shall be charged with participation in an event. No further penalty will be assessed.
Order change for swimmers two, three and four are permitted at any time without penalty. The meet administration shall be informed of said changes for the accuracy of results.
While the NCAA Rules Book is very flexible on how long coaches have to change their relay orders, it draws a hard line at actually swimming the quartet who is on the relay card.
A swimmer for a different team at the meet told SwimSwam that Zaria Terry swam the butterfly leg when Masha Zhukova was listed on Meet Mobile. A spokesperson for Southern Illinois confirmed that it was the butterfly leg that had the wrong swimmer.
The recorded butterfly split of 24.52 was the fifth-best in the field.
While the points lost ultimately didn’t effect the final meet outcome, it would have changed the order of teams after that relay, where Southern Illinois was 2.5 points ahead of Missouri State for 2nd place. SIU ultimately finished 75 points behind the champions Indiana State and 44 points ahead of Missouri State.
Didn’t a USA men’s relay get DQed for this at Pan Pacs in 2018?
As someone else mentioned in this thread, the same thing happened to W&L at the ODAC meet 800 free relay. However, the time was allowed to stand as it is my understanding they “self-reported”. But a bad look given their other… relay shenanigans…
My understanding is W&L had the correct names and correct leadoff swimmer. The order for swimmers 2-4 was just different and as the rule clearly states, that’s not a DQ.
It’s a bummer, but it happens.
Yeah, not that unusual.
I very rarely comment in this forum, but when I or my program are publicly accused of games or essentially cheating, I feel compelled to respond.
This was a completely honest mistake that I take 100% responsibility for. There would have been no reason to play “games” since both women had plenty of event eligibility remaining at that point of the meet.
I turned in a relay entry card at the beginning of the session, and we chose to make a change during the session after seeing multiple events. During the diving break I went to the admin table to make the change and spoke to the MVC representative, but no one from meet admin was there at that time.… Read more »
Why would anyone downvote this?
relay names guy would’ve stopped this
This is my favorite comment of all time 🤣🤣🤣
Got it…so then it looks like the MVC website also has the wrong swimmers on the wrong legs…
Oof.
Technically, this rule doesn’t cover medley relays, it applies to freestyle ones, lol.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I posted the whole rule. It doesn’t specify the type of relay it applies to anywhere. It applies to all relays.
Page 50 in the rule book here: https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/championships/sports/swimdive/rules/PRXSW_RulesBook.pdf
So Washington & Lee 800 Free relay had the wrong order too. The results stood. Then they got DQ’ed. Then the DQ got overturned.
You can always change the relay ORDER, including in a medley. But you can’t change actual 4 swimmers.
Well Washington & Lee relays go on their own set of rules as we all know…
I see. I misunderstood the issue. I thought that they just switched who swam each leg, like the breaststroker swam fly and vice versa, not that they swapped an actual member.
So the results were protested over 15 minutes after the event concluded? Doesn’t that make the protest moot?
Says a SIU coach hurt when their games or sloppiness were exposed
I’m not saying the rule is fair or makes sense I’m saying it’s the rule. What’s the point of them if they aren’t held to.