I have a solution.
If you follow me on the platform formerly known as Twitter, you know that I’ve been railing against Last Chance meets for the last week, and for years.
Last Chance meets are boring, they’re tedious, they’re unserious, and they’re counter to the spirit of competition – and if you aren’t invested in the spirit of competition of collegiate swimming, then the 2025 reality is that you aren’t invested in the existence of collegiate swimming.
So far this weekend, I have seen a 1:13 as an official recorded time in a women’s 200 free relay, and a swimmer who stopped a 200 free after the first 50 recorded as the official event winner. That’s all of the evidence I need to know that these glorified time trials are just not in the spirit of sports.
And to clarify: I don’t blame coaches for taking advantage of the system. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do within the rules in the best interest of your athletes. That is why I am proposing a change of the rules.
I have seen a few good counterpoints in favor of them, with the best being that you’d hate for a potential NCAA scorer to get sick during their conference meet and miss the chance to swim at NCAAs not because of training plans or effort or race execution, but because of illness. And I agree with that, to an extent.
So I have a new, radical proposal
that so many old school coaches, who want control, are going to hate.
First, we must remember that the current NCAA selection procedures are a zero sum game. One individual in means one individual out, so “taking away someone’s opportunity to make the meet at a Last Chance” is also the same as “giving someone the opportunity to make the meet at a Conference Championship.”
The idea is sort of borrowed from track & field, and sort of borrowed from basketball. Sort of.
- First,you chose the NCAA field until you get to 10 remaining slots in each individual event.
- Then you host four Regional Play-In sites, where anybody not already qualified who has at least a “B” cut can attend (there are a ton of those – 150+ per event).
- Top 2 from each region, plus the two next-best ‘wildcard’ times, fill the last 10 spots from NCAAs.
Here are the reasons I think this would be an awesome spectacle:
- It would create a “prove it in the pool” scenario for those last spots. “If you want my spot, then beat me for it.”
- It would be incredible must-see TV. It will have that Olympic Trials feel, where there’s absolute euphoria surrounded by absolute heartbreak.
- It would be equitable, and all swimmers would get their chance, in the water, where sports are meant to be played out.
The two downsides I anticipate being brought up are cost and pool choice, which I really don’t think are that big of downsides. It can’t be more expensive to run these four regional meets than it is to run the 15 scattered Last Chance meets, especially if there’s some offsetting revenue from ticket sales or advertising on a stream. In terms of pool choice (aka home pool, or one pool being faster than others for wildcard slots), that’s just a part of sports.
In the ‘cynical, I’ve watched swimming refuse to do anything good for too long’ brain, I assume that this shift would be too radical to ever pass muster with the powerful coaches’ committee that makes these decisions, so it is probably dead before it gets going, but if anyone has any other reasons why this idea actually sucks, leave them in the comments below.
I think the hard part is the schedule. The conference meets are at different times and then the cutoff for the mens and womens meets are at different times. I’ve been to last chance meets where the times were fast (people making the meet) and there was some semblance of energy in the room, and I’ve been to the ones where everyone wondered what they were doing there. I do like the idea of fewer last chance meets so that hopefully they are more well attended. I think you make it like an invite and give away a trophy or something. Bring your non-conference kids who still won’t make it and make the meet a party. I don’t know if… Read more »
This is a great idea. The logistics would need to be worked out, but it would revive the otherwise dreadful last-chance meets. For swimmers who didn’t swim well at their conference championship meet because of illness (or something else), and for those who had only had one opportunity to swim the 1650 well, this would offer a much more competitive atmosphere and be an incentive rather than a letdown. Plus, with USA swimming memberships consistently down, changes need to be made to make things more exciting for both existing college swimmers and those college swimming prospects. If we want swimming to be respected at the level it should be, changes need to happen.
How about no tech suits at the last chance meets since the swimmers are already getting another bite of the apple? Goggles and caps are ok.
Simpler idea is just end it with the conference championships.
Instead of publishing a new article every week about how to change the sport with ideas no one wants to watch, why not embrace the purity of the sport? Fans care about fast swimming and records, not swim-offs or round-robin events. It’s exhausting to keep hearing about the need for change when the sport is already great as it is.
I’m obviously biased, but I think SwimSwam writes plenty of articles that celebrate the purity of swimming.
Silly comment. People always think about and review EVERYTHING with an eye one making it better.
SwimSwam does a lot for the sport of swimming to highlight individual and collective successes. Sport constantly evolves and it is smart to focus on improvement while maintaining the spirit of the sport. The NHL just had a massive success replacing the all-star game with the 4 Nations Face Off and the CFB is coming off its first year with a massive change in structure, for example. A sport doesn’t need to be fundamentally broken to make some changes.
I for one would watch this NCAAs Wave I.
I wonder if to sell this a little more we could do a study on last chance qualifiers and their time drops a NCAAs.
I remember when I swam there was someone that never beat me in conference, but at their last chance meet they always swam so much faster, close the A cut, and then at NCAAs swam about as fast as they did a conference. That always was a little strange and fishy to me.
Plus with how teams are approaching mid-season, last chance meets probably have less of an importance.
I like this idea because it sort of makes the meet more of a conference/high level feel and sort of bring more transparency to it as well.
Or if they score. Agree! I doubt many improve or score when it counts!
There is a well-known idea among coaches that officials at Last Chance meets are watching things a little less closely than they might be at a conference meet.
Are we suggesting some shaky breaststroke pullouts?
Would the Regional a swimmer is assigned to be based off the geography of the college team they are competing for, or the club team that they train with?
Have them with the zone diving meets
Get rid of diving completely and then swimming would have more resources, 4 last chance regional meets and a more fluid championship! This IS the wave of the future.