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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A 16 team end of season bracket style dual meet would be great for the sport
Alternate meet format:
200 medley relay
200 free
200 butterback
400 free relay
Done.
Alternate meet format but this time I’m actually serious:
200 medley relay
200 free
100 stroke (randomly selected each round)
400 free relay
Whole dual meet tournament done in a day
Comments already critiquing are super lame. Mistakes inevitable. Who cares.
A bunch of good dudes put together a great setup. Let it play out.
Could be great!
It would be concerning to me if the coaches are treating the feedback they get as “super lame.” The ISL took this approach, and it didn’t really work out for them.
The best reason to put this out into the world 6 months ahead of time is to gather feedback. Of course we can all ignore the “no version of a dual meet gimmick will ever work” crowd, but I think if folks have ideas about format, they should be at least considered.
Looks awesome
Let’s wait and see how it plays out before deciding if it’s going to be what’s needed or not. Might be a win…might not be…
That’s the message that the organizers are sending as well. They just wanted to try something different. Which in itself is a win for swimming.
what is the point of this? it doesn’t sound fun to watch or beneficial for the swimmers..
SS commenters when there is change after demanding change: 🤯☹️🤬
A lot of swim “fans” love to complain and talk about the sky falling but hate any kind of change that might take away the complaint!
I think we want change to more exciting formats for sure
but this weekend event involves 10+ hours of swimming by my count … I’m a pretty big swimfan , but I’m not going to watch that . and the event kind of limits the ability to go very fast given short turnarounds and back to backs of each session, so doubt there will be many best season times that I would watch highlights of …
I thought we want shorter, tighter events that can be packaged up nicely for content distribution
Shorter, tighter events that can be packaged up nicely for content distribution is exactly what this is…
March Madness is a series of short, fast-paced, exciting games leading to one final. This is a smaller version of that.
I agree it’s not perfect, but it’s laying the foundation for better, more exciting change in the future. Progress isn’t linear and I love the initiative taken by these teams to change the status quo.
I’d suggest listening to the podcast. There are several points laid out.
So in this format distance swimmers became 100% irrelevant. Good to know.
There is still the 500 free in this format. How would you suggest incorporating distance events to interest non-swimming fans?
The last place swimmer in the mile at the 500, 1000, and 1500 yard points are sucked out of their lane a la Agustus Gloop.
Barry Revzin is a huge proponent of this event. Drexel tried it at their intrasquad.
I don’t care about non-swimming fans. They will only watch the Olympics and if what the USA pulls off every 4 yeas doesn’t make them swim fans, then nothing will. You’ll never get them to watch anything else gimmicky or traditional en masse. As for distance swimming, as with any other endurance event (cycling, running, triathlon), can be uniquely interesting. But only to a certain crowd interested in the training (distances, sets, repeats, blood lactates, HRs, pacing, technology utilized, etc.) and mental aspects it takes to train and compete. You might be able to pull in endurance sport fans, but never ‘non-swim’ fans. Having said this, i am off to listen to the podcast and will amend if it changes… Read more »
Have coaches put as much brain power into coaching future Bobby Finkes as they do in coaching future Jack Alexys.
This comment section is a microcosm of how swimming will never progress in popularity.
It’s pretty funny to me how people complain about wanting change, and then when change happens, people complain about it.
It’s the biggest thing holding this sport back. Perhaps swimming just attracts a lot of whiners!
Coleman, it’s because the change people want is some angel investor/donor to throw 1 billion into swimming so we can go on our merry way
If swimming got a $1 billion angel investment, we’d spend it on a bunch of new kickboards. Guarantee it.
Power towers. A BILLION dollars worth of power towers
The takeaway/constant is the people, they love to complain!