NCAA Division I Committee Discusses Shifting 100 Fly Before 400 IM in Championship Schedule

Minutes from the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving Committee’s April meeting have been released, and there are a number of significant items and a handful of minor items of note to come out of that meeting.

• 2025 NCAA Women’s D1 Swimming & Diving Championships – Federal Way, Washington – March 19-22
• 2025 NCAA Men’s D1 Swimming & Diving Championships – Federal Way, Washington – March 26-29
• Washington State will be the official host institution of both meets.

Among the major items are a discussion of qualifying times for the 2025 championships, approved non-NCAA qualifying meets for 2024/2025, reveal of zone diving locations for next season, and a proposed change to the NCAA Championship event schedule.

Proposed Event Schedule Change

The biggest fundamental change in the pipeline is a proposal to move the 100 fly before the 400 IM on day 3 of the NCAA Championship meet.

The report says that “the committee will seek additional feedback” on both this change and the timing of diving consolation finals moving to immediately before finals vs directly after prelims before making a final decision.

Day 3 Swimming Schedule Change:

The pretense for this is that the 100 fly/100 back double is by far the most common same-day double in collegiate swimming, and moving those events further apart would make that double more plausible. It revives the age-old debate as to whether the goal of the swimming schedule is to “make doubles as easy as possible” or to “reward swimmers more capable of taking on tough doubles, or swimmers who are versatile enough to swim an event from each of the meet’s three days.”

Swimmers who swam both the 100 fly and 100 back at last year’s NCAA Championship meet:

This would also benefit a handful of other swimmers with less-traditional doubles, like Indiana’s Finn Brooks, who was 15th in the 100 fly and 32nd in the 100 breast at last year’s NCAA Championship meet.

No Long Course Qualifying Next Year; Extra-Collegiate Qualifying Meets Approved

With the committee’s updated focus on bona fide competition, the committee approved four non-collegiate meets for NCAA qualifying status for the 2024-2025 season:

• 2024 USA Swimming U.S. Open Championships – December 4-7, 2024 – Greensboro, North Carolina
• 2024 USA Diving Winter National Championships – December 7-15, 2024 – Bloomington, Indiana
• World Aquatics World Swimming Championships (aka Short Course Worlds) – December 10-15, 2024 – Budapest, Hungary
• 2024 USA Swimming Winter Juniors East/West – December 11-14 – Greensboro, North Carolina & Austin, Texas

The committee also reaffirmed that long course meters qualifying times for the NCAA Championships would be in pre-Olympic years only, meaning that next year swimmers will only be able to qualify in short course yards and short course meters.

Qualifying Standards

Qualifying standards and timelines remain unchanged (could that change in the future?), and the committee announced that many standards will not change next season.

In general, the standard-setting procedure will not change:

• A cuts (Individual): Average of the 8th-best time on the performance list over the past three years
• B cuts (Individual): Average of the 125th-best time on the performance list over the past three years
• A Cuts (Relay Standards): Average of the 16th-best time on the championship finals performance list over the last three years.
• B Cuts (Relay Standards): Average of the 24th-best time on the championship finals performance list over the last three years.

All four standards come with the caveat that time standards cannot get slower, and this year, the A cut for the women’s 1650 free, women’s 200 back, women’s 200 breast, women’s 200 IM, women’s 400 IM, and men’s 500 free, plus the B cut for the women’s 500 free will not change (because they would have gotten slower).

The same goes for the A cut for the women’s 800 free relay, women’s 200 medley relay, and men’s 400 medley relay.

While the individual standards are functionally ‘window dressing’ (because selections are based on national rank, not the standards), the relay qualification times are more clear-lines where teams past those marks know they’re into the NCAA Championships.

Zone diving qualifying standards have not changed.

Zone Diving/Team Diving

The Zone Diving locations, qualification spots, and reimbursement spots have all been released, based on each zone’s performance at last year’s NCAA Championship meets.

2025 Zone Diving Host Sites

2025 Zone Diving Qualification Slots Per Zone

The committee also says that it will continue looking into team diving, which has faced mixed reviews from swim coaches across the country, but that it will not be added to the 2025 NCAA Championships.

Other More Minor Updates

• Teams will now have to declare awards podium stand-ins for athletes with individual doubles in finals by 5PM each day. Podium stand-ins are now allowed if one of the events is a relay. Podium substitutes allow athletes to warm up and cool down on an appropriate timeline when they have multiple individual finals in a session.
• Team logos will continue to be incorporated into the championship banners rather than hanging individual banners for each team.
• Michael Poropat will be the on-deck PA announcer for swimming at both the men’s and women’s championships in 2025 and Lia Fusaro will be the on-deck PA announcer for diving.
• The committee reaffirmed that it will, “when possible” try to reserve 10% of the total number of seats available for public sale (though “when possible” negates the veracity of the effort as anything more than a wish for the world). Teams will continue to be able to request up to 40 all-session tickets, which they have to pay for, by the established deadline. Both 2025 championships will be held at the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Washington, which has off-deck spectator seating for 2,500. Recent NCAA Championship meets held in Federal Way have seen sparse attendance, so public ticketing is not expected to be an issue.
• The team seating selection on-deck will continue to prioritize teams in order of their finish from last year’s championship, but the process for teams that didn’t score last year has been adjusted. They will select their seating locations after the swimming coaches meeting on Wednesday at 1PM in order of number of participants for the 2025 championships. The choice order will be alphabetical if teams have the same number of qualifiers.
• The committee has received bids to host the 2027-2028 championships and are discussing them, though there has been a growing focus among NCAA coaches about available deck space in championship hosts, which might eliminate some of the usual suspects in the championship hosting rotation. The 2026 championships will both be hosted in Atlanta at Georgia Tech.