There will be no empty lanes between swimmers during this year’s NCAA swimming & diving championship season, as no COVID-19 waiver was approved.
According to the official NCAA pre-championships email that was distributed to coaches last week, there are no COVID-19 Waivers approved for the 2022-2023 season. In every year since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in spring 2020, meets have been allowed to leave an empty lane between swimmers or relays, nominally in the interest of preventing overcrowding behind the blocks and the potential spread of the coronavirus.
While most things had normalized by the 2022 conference championship season, many meets maintained this protocol, in part because some coaches felt that the ‘clean water’ gave their relays a better shot at hitting NCAA qualifying times. There had to be an NCAA waiver granted, though, to allow that, and no waivers were granted this season.
Thus the policy reverts back to Rule 5-7 from the NCAA Swimming & Diving rule book:
When seeding the swimmers, intentionally leaving empty lanes between them is not permitted.
2023 NCAA Championships:
- Division II Men and Women – Indianapolis, IN (March 8-11, 2023)
- Division III Men and Women – Greensboro, NC, IN (March 15-18, 2023)
- Division I Women – Knoxville, TN (March 15-18, 2023)
- Division I Men – Minneapolis, MN (March 22-25, 2023)
Can relays still time trial qualify? Easy to get clean water that way.
They can, within the same limits that have always been there.
will they still be timed finals?
I’m honestly glad to see this. If you need to guarantee empty lanes on both sides of you to qualify for the big meet then you probably shouldn’t be sending a relay in that event.
OMG TORRI HUSKE
Common sense prevails