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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My uncle’s will definitely be watching this instead of football… /s
Until we get swimmers and their families to be swimming fans, none of this matters.
I think a more effective way to engage swimmers and their families is to take their dual meets on the road and do them at club pools… Doesn’t have to be wrinky-dinky pools, but go to where the swimmers are, during their training time, and do your dual meet there. In front of wild fans. Open up their eyes.
The parents won’t be travelling to the bigger cities or college towns to see a 90min dual meet.
Go meet your fans where they are… If you want them.
Or chase my uncle’s. Who… Read more »
25s, 50s and 100s, no diving, no boring distance events, blindfolded relays, deep water fighting and release a bull shark or two in the pool for crowd appeal – MIGHT bring in some spectators.
This is a great thing to try! Shorter dual meets with outcomes that matter (ie win and move on, lose and you’re out) are a fun way to give swimmers and fans a reason to be invested in the experience. I’ve always felt odd events like 300 free or 200 IM with mixed up stroke order were gimmicky, whereas this feels like purposeful change, trying to alter the format to make it more compelling to fans. Time will tell if this is the right recipe, but it’s exciting to see them trying it!
I will note, since I just put down off event formats, that I do think the skins format is a good one – again because it actually engages fans. Each round’s outcome has consequences. That could be fun to incorporate more into college dual meets as well
It’s great to try something different. But we have to wait and see if this gets swimmers ready for Conference and Nationals. I’m in favor of trying anything that does this.
It’s great to see these coaches leading from the front – the format seems to be considering the athletes and teams thoughtfully while trying to appeal to a new audience. As someone who has attended a lot of collegiate meets over the past 3 years and was never a swimmer myself, I feel that some of the most important work to be done between now and October will be in the details that were not covered in the podcast: providing an entertaining atmosphere. The Texas meet in January was the perfect example of this (minus the long lines for food/drinks) – great music, great energy on deck and in the stands with tons of students and families. A few ideas:… Read more »
Why not I guess, feels forced rn IMO but I see no harm
This is great that they’re actually trying something out, my issue is that it really isn’t that different. It’s a shorter dual meet with back to back meets. If we want to do something different, then do something different. A standard dual meet already caters to winning events, why not make it so going 2,3,4 actually nets you more points? Honestly I think doing 2v2 would be better, make it so that you can’t just throw the best guy in an event and immediately get more points, if you want it to be more exciting make each place actually matter more so you can’t win the meet with 2 or 3 studs, again like a normal dual meet. 2v2 also… Read more »
“best guy in an event and immediately get more points” – why should we diminish the impact the fastest swimmers have on a meet? you shouldnt get more points for having 2 swimmers that are slower than the fastest swimmer.
Did you even read? Do you know how a typical dual meet scoring works? In a typical dual meet, if your team wins an event and you have another swimmer in it, regardless of your second swimmers place your team will get 10 points while the other team can get a max of 9 (the other team can go 2,3,4,5 and still get outscored). My point is traditional dual meets already reward the team with more studs, so why are we using the exact same model? Why not reward depth, which is against the norm? If you go 1-3 you outscore 2-4, but if all you have to do is win the event to guarantee way more points than the… Read more »
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.