The North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) has cancelled this weekend’s regional swimming and diving meets due to severe weather expected to hit the state.
A major winter storm is expected to fall on the East Coast over the weekend, with North Carolina at the center of it.
Cities in North Carolina, including Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro, could see “the biggest snowstorm in decades,” according to AccuWeather.
Regional meets, which were expected to take place from Thursday to Saturday, will not be made up, and swimmers will instead shift their focus to the state meet in Cary from Feb. 11-14.
This year marks the start of a major change in how the NCHSAA conducts state meets. The NCHSAA will have state meets in six classifications, which is double the three state meets held from 2002 to 2025.
Instead of meets in 1A/2A, 3A and 4A, the previous largest classification, the classifications are now 1A/2A/3A, 4A, 5A, 6A, 7A and 8A (the largest).
There were 12 regional meets scheduled, two in each of the six classifications.
It’s expected that qualification for the state meet will be based on meeting qualifying time standards during the regular season.
The NCHSAA has not responded to a request for comment.
State champions last year were Cardinal Gibbons in 4A, Lake Norman Charter in 3A and Raleigh Charter in 1A/2A/3A.
The NCHSAA also adjusted the first four rounds of the dual team state wrestling tournament, but didn’t outright cancel them as was the case for swimming.
The first and second rounds for wrestling will now be held on Feb. 3, while the third and fourth rounds will be held on Feb. 5.
NC has gotten snow so the event should have been POSTPONED not flat out canceled. Disrespect for the sport and more importantly the athletes who work so hard across the entire state. This would never would happen for another sport.
Our Western Regional Championships were to be held in Greensboro. There needs to be at least one aquatics center in NC west of Charlotte.
Two or three divisions is plenty for high school swimming.
I think NCHSSA did a good job adjusting regionals/states for travel in the ice and snow.
Supposed to get 4 inches in Greensboro…if AccuWeather said that I can’t find anything about that and it would be an extreme exaggeration
It’s going to snow all day, and we’ve already got more in western NC
How will swimmers make the state meet then?
As a note, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association will be re-running the scores from the state meet, breaking them down into each region, so find winners from each region. So a swimmer might not win the overall event, but could still place first against the other swimmers in their region, and will be awarded as such. I appreciate that they’re doing what they can to mitigate these unfortunate circumstances.
Talk about participation throphies, 6 state high school divisions?
California, the state with the most swimmers, continues to run 1 state meet. It means something if you make it.
6 public school divisions at that. Then they have a couple private school divisions as well.
…and this is why swimming should be a fall sport.
It keeps the momentum going from summer league, creates opportunities for outdoor pool practices to ease the strain on limited indoor space, and makes the long “short course season” feel cleaner and more structured. Clubs could focus on high school swimming from September through Thanksgiving, then December to March/April to refocus on club swimming, followed by long course from April through August. And as we’ve seen with recent regional cancellations, fall timing would be far less vulnerable to weather disruptions.
I disagree actually. I always felt like there are too few sports that take place in the winter season. If we moved all swimming seasons to the fall, that would mean students would have choose between swimming and say, cross country or soccer or football. The goal of high school sports should be to increase participation in many sports, and moving swimming away from being a winter sport takes away from that.
Yes, winter weather does pose a problem, but the same issues could apply for other winter sports like basketball, wrestling, hockey, and gymnastics.
Here in Wisconsin, our girls season is in the fall. I wonder if participation rates in the sport would go up if we moved it… Read more »
Everybody gets a trophy!!!