Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) – Men and Women
- Wednesday, February 20 – Saturday, February 23
- Liberty Natatorium, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia (Eastern Time Zone)
- Defending Champion: Incarnate Word men & FGCU women (4x) (results)
- Live results
- Live Video
- Championship Central
The Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA), a conference that serves the needs of both swimming & diving and beach volleyball schools that have been orphaned from their primary conferences, had a timing malfunction on Thursday morning during the first preliminary session at the 2019 championship meet.
The meet was stopped after 4 heats of the men’s 50 freestyles, because of an issue with the timing system. After about a 45 minute delay, it was determined that the timing system had malfunctioned, and that those 4 heats would have to be reswum. The meet resumed almost an hour after it stopped. While we don’t know what the original times were, of the 16 finalists in the race, 12 swam season best times (including the top 10 finishers in prelims).
This isn’t the first issue that the meet’s hosts, Liberty University, have had with the timing system at their new pool. At the 2018 ISCA Jr. National Cup, the Daktronics system was miswired according to meet hosts and the manufacturer, resulting in an across-the-board adjustment of .39 seconds from the impacted sessions. Before the miswiring was discovered, Liberty had hosted an NCAA Last Chance Meet, where 5 swimmers earned NCAA qualifying times, which could have been the result of those timing errors. At that same meet, all men’s results were disqualified after the NCAA interpreted the men’s half of the meet to be ‘not bona fied’ because only 1 men’s team, East Carolina, was present.
They should hire a third party to bring in external timing system/equipment until they figure this out. Otherwise they should not be able to get a meet sanctioned. I’ve been a meet ref at a new pool before and have dealt with ghosts in the machine; as such I have some sympathy for the host. However, they’ve had plenty of time to sort this out, there is zero excuse for not solving it by now.
Currently at the CCSA championships and have yet to make it through a whole session without at least an hour break due to timing issues. We are on session 6 and are currently on another break in the middle of the 200 fly
Yeah but they were SO CLOSE today!
There have been delays due to timing issues every session of this meet. At the end of the day, it’s the athletes that suffer. They’ve worked all season for this and are having to deal with the constant frustrations.
With that being said, this has been a issue at meets at this facility before. If it is faulty daktronics, then they need to rewire the deck— probably costly, since it was built in. Regardless, is there no back up harness… bring in a back up timing system and wire it on the deck. Who cares about a few wires if these delays end. The failure of the staff to problem solve is infuriating.
The worst organization of the meet EVER. Hopefully they will never host a Conference Meet again….
Apparently they signed a two year agreement to host this meet. I don’t think anyone wants to come back again after the issues this year. There hasn’t been a single session without issues and the delays are 30 minutes at the shortest
Dudeman – I’ve been told that it’s not a 2 year agreement.
Everything I’ve heard here is that the issues have been with the Daktronics technology. The Liberty Aquatics staff has been wonderful to work with, and reports from the officials have been centered around faulty Daktronics timing.
I know the Liberty ‘machine’ is working hard to do damage control. They may well be wonderful to work with…but it’s not like this is news to anybody that they have a faulty system. The failing was in addressing the faulty system before hosting any more meets that mattered.
How many meets have to be ruined by this facility before “but DAKTRONICS!!!” is no longer acceptable?
More delays on Friday….not good
55 minutes at this point. This is crazy.
Go back and look at last nights men’s A final 50 free video. Results on video show everyone under 20 sec. announcer touted NCAA cuts. Then when scored, no one under 20 seconds. This should not be allowed to count for NCAA time standards.
I hope you guys dig into this, it’s just not fair to the athletes.
Not surprising that Liberty continues to have issues with their timing systems. The coach has two goals in life: feeding his ego and seeing fast times from his swimmers. “If the system benefits us and no one notices, then it works, right?” Just another prime example of self-centered priorities from that school. There is no care about how other teams’ athletes are impacted by the problems.
Sorry but I’ll be that guy…at what point do you question the host institution? Cause I’m there…
Probably now.