NCAA Releases 2016-2017 Division I Time Standards

The NCAA has released the time standards for the 2016-2017 NCAA Division I Championships. Both meets will be hosted at Indianapolis’ IUPUI Natatorium, with the women’s meet running from March 16th-18th and the men’s meet from March 23rd-25th.

The individual event standards represent more of a measuring stick of progress than anything that has a massive impact on the outcome of the NCAA Championships. While “A” cuts are indicative that a swimmer is a big contender in March, it would be very unusual for anything beyond the “top X swimmers per event” standard to impact who is actually going to the NCAA Championships.

Just like last year, the “B” standards have remained unchanged. While the “A” standards have gotten a bit faster in some places, there hasn’t been a significant move in those races, and in most cases on the women’s side they too have remained the same. That’s an indicator of a relatively slower NCAA qualifying meet last season than they year before, as compared to the men’s standards, which have changed more significantly (including the “A” standard in the 200 back dipping under 1:40, for example).

A brief refresher on how NCAA qualifying works (read the fuller explanation here):

• Individual Events: In individual races, all swimmers with “A” standards automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships. Thereafter, swimmers are chosen event-by-event, lined up to an equal number across all events, until the maximum number of individual swimmers have been selected (235 for men, 281 for women).
• Relay Events: All relays with the Qualifying Standard can swim at the NCAA Championships, provided they have 1 individual (swimmer or diver) invited to the meet as well. Once a team has a relay invited, they can swim any relay in which they have a provisional standard as well. Relays are qualified “to the team,” not to the individual swimmers, so teams can take whichever swimmers they want to participate in relays.