SwimSwam Pulse is a recurring feature tracking and analyzing the results of our periodic A3 Performance Polls. You can cast your vote in our newest poll on the SwimSwam homepage, about halfway down the page on the right side.
Our most recent poll asked SwimSwam readers if the standings at a midseason invitational are relevant:
Question: Do team standings/scoring matter at midseason invitationals?
RESULTS
- No – 73.6%
- Yes – 26.4%
The University of Texas opted to have their Hall of Fame Invite meet last week run without any team scores, which was a puzzling move to some given the midseason meets are one of the rare times in a college swimming season where teams taper down and aim to post some quick times.
Team scores aren’t as much of a focus at these competitions relative to conference championship meets, and of course NCAAs, but they’re still a good indicator to gauge a team’s performance, a measuring stick of sorts, relative to other squads midway through the season.
We have seen certain invites stray away from the traditional invitational scoring format, such as last week’s Tennessee Invite, which only featured three teams and was scored as a double dual meet between Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
In our latest poll, we asked SwimSwam readers if team scoring mattered during midseason invites, and an overwhelming majority said no.
Perhaps the primary reason why only 26.4% of readers put any significance on team standings during invites is that there’s usually a wide disparity between teams and their ability, with only a few top-tier squads attending each meet.
For example, the Longhorn women would’ve had a challenge from Stanford if the Texas Hall of Fame Invite had scoring, but the men would’ve been absolutely dominant over the entire field, which also included USC, BYU and Wisconsin. At the UGA Fall Invite there was a clear hierarchy with Florida, Georgia and Alabama going 1-2-3 for both men and women, while the Virginia women and Tennessee men were clearly a few steps ahead of their competition in Knoxville. We also saw a team like Texas A&M host the Art Adamson Invite and cruise past the competition, with the TCU women and Utah men claiming the runner-up spots.
There are also different scoring formats used at different meets, with the Wolfpack Elite Invite, for example, scoring down to the ‘C’ final (top 24), while many others do top 16 (‘B’ final).
There’s also the fact that many teams will send their divers to one invite and their swimmers to another, resulting in the team standings not fully reflecting the strength of a squad.
Ultimately, it seems coaches and swimmers are focused more on posting times for individual and relay qualification for NCAAs, to take some pressure off for their conference championship meets, compared to where their team finishes in the standings.
On the other hand, there are still over a quarter of readers who believe the standings matter, and for teams who line up against another squad that’s in a similar tier to theirs at an invite, they should.
The Arizona State men topped NC State at the Wolfpack Elite Invite, while the NC State women beat the Sun Devils by a similar margin. Although the ASU men getting the upper hand on the Wolfpack should be significant for them, it’s likely that the gap between NC State and ASU on the women’s side is bigger than what the final scores suggest, likely due to the ‘C’ final scoring.
Below, vote in our new A3 Performance Poll, which asks: Which performance marked the biggest breakthrough last week?
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The A3 Performance Poll is courtesy of A3 Performance, a SwimSwam partner.
Too many invites which means no depth which means scoring is generally kind of pointless
Keeping track is a natural tendency, or we would not call it ‘competitive swimming’. But if the meet is not ‘officially’ scored, anyone willing to spend a few minutes can ‘score’ it themselves, using any format they wish. Most people probably approximate it intuitively. At some point, I’ll be looking for a SwimSwam article scoring all the top swims from the cumulative body of Invite results. Is it interesting for me to know who swam the fastest 200 IM, the ninth fastest 200 IM, etc, over the two-week batch of Invites? Yes, it is … and I’d rather read your article about it than drill around figuring all that out for myself.