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.
Expand the events to the top 30 AND conference champion with a B cut. But auto qualifiers do not qualify to swim a bonus event unless they achieved the A cut in their championship event
Thinking about March Madness and the concept of at-large bids… What if swimmers who win their conference championship in a specific event (while also achieving an NCAA B Cut) were given automatic invites to NCAAs in their respective event? Not many men or women who are seeded 28th-38th are going to score anyways, but it would create opportunities for more participation and involvement from top athletes at smaller schools who otherwise may be just barely on the outside looking in…. With roster caps being implemented as well, this could further encourage talent dispersion as some athletes look to swim at mid-major programs where they might have a clearer path to NCAA qualification
I agree, why can’t the conference champions get an automatic bid to the NCAA? Then fill in the A cuts and then find the rest of the field using the same criteria it is now.
I was against it for a cost standpoint, but more so as it relates to travel. (Clearly the overall distance people have to travel to 15 meets has to be lower than the distance they’d need to travel for four.)
But! Eh who cares, the travel probably isn’t that different and at least this would be fun.
Tho I feel like most would just ditch the last chance meets and this in favor of “nothing.”
what about 3-4 regional midseason meets that “boost” rankings for the bottom ~10 in each event?
boosts are based on finish order (not time) and swimmers can only jump within their region. something like a FINA point bonus to existing qualifying times
It has h2h drama but still rewards the better post-conf rank. It’d also introduce factors like event strategy (rest for one vs hedge across multiple)
you could get creative and score points for skins, multi-race totals, split ranks etc…. or just base it on the event itself
Incredible idea.
Where do you imagine it sitting in the timeline of the season – still between conference and NCAAs? Would this require conference meets to be moved up sooner? Could you make this more radical & do away with “mid season invites”, and turn them into conference meets, then make Jan-March into full on playoff season, ending with NCAAs?
I’ve long liked the idea of moving conference meets to mid-season, with the only challenge to that in my mind being “what do you do with the other 90% of swimmers who aren’t going to NCAAs in the spring semester?”
I think there’s a lot of moving parts, but I do think these regional meets would have to be the last counting thing before NCAAs, however that timing works out.
Maybe you do Conference meets in mid-December, Regional qualifiers in mid-January, and NCAAs in mid-February, wrapping the whole thing up before March Madness begins?
I’d be more excited to see a slightly larger field for the NCAA Championship Meet and then only ONE event champion gain automatic entry, plus one from the next best times area.
So, your proposal calls for 10 to enter on the last ditch meet cycle — I’d shrink that to five.
Does that work for you?
I’m okay with it.
Or even going to an East and a West, making top 2 from each + 1 wildcard.
Or an East-Central-West, top 2 + 1 wildcard for 7 per event.
I think there’s a million different ways to split up the numbers. To me somewhere in the 5-10 per event range is a good target. Maybe a bit smaller as you suggested would help deal with what someone brought up, which is that this would have a lot more one event invitees and so could unintentionally expand the field quite a bit.
A nugget buried in these comments is discussion of moving NCAA swimming championships out of the period when NCAA men’s basketball tournament is happening. That would be smart. NCAA track & field is doing their championships before March Madness and Frozen Four is after March Madness. If swimming aims to build more of a following outside of friends and family, dont do your championship meet then
I’m old school and don’t think we should have last chance meets (they could also be called do overs). make conference champs mater more/all or nothing.
This has been out there for a while: https://swimswam.com/ncaa-considering-pushing-division-i-swim-dive-championships-into-april/
I guess that it was officially in the published minutes of a coaches’ meeting is new information though.
I wonder if someone older than me remembers when Last Chance meets started…I’ve always been under the impression that they’ve always been around, but maybe that’s wrong.
I swam in one in spring of 86′
So seems like Last Chance meets are, in fact, the old school idea…
Love this! Very similar to the Wave 1/Wave 2 concept of 2021 Trials. Sure, a little cumbersome, but very much do-able and was very much in the best interest of the sport. Make a B standard, but not invited to the big dance? Swim your way in!
NCAA host sites could reserve extra hotel rooms for X number of athletes who make the jump.
Makes swimming more of an actual EVENT.
Would definitely add needed excitement and tension.