Acalanes High School swimmers won’t have the opportunity to compete at this weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) North Coast Section meet after the team’s entries weren’t submitted due to a technical error.
According to a family member of one of the team members, Acalanes head coach Brett Usinger believed he had submitted entries for the 13 swimmers who qualified for the meet prior to the Sunday deadline.
Update – May 2:
Coach Usinger admitted fault, telling AB7: “Essentially the vast majority of my entries were undone. It was all incomplete, and it was past the deadline so I no longer had the ability to make any changes.”
“There is no email confirmation or submit button that goes out,” Usinger said. “I don’t email entries to any particular person. You can imagine it looking like a Google Sheet or Excel.”
He followed up with North Coast Section (NCS) officials to confirm the submission, but received word on Monday, after the deadline passed, that the entries had not come through and therefore the athletes would not be able to compete.
“Acalanes High School did not submit their NCS swim team entries for this weekend’s championships before the mandatory deadline of April 28, 2024, at 1:15 p.m.,” said Pat Cruickshank, the NCS Commissioner, in a statement to ABC 7. “This occurred after a reminder was sent out to all NCS member schools by the Section office that the deadline was mandatory and no exceptions for late entries would be made.”
The irony in the situation is that Cruickshank, who is penalizing the Acalanes swimmers given the technical glitch benefitted from a similar exception when he was Athletic Director at Heritage High School. In 2012, Heritage High School did not submit their swimming entries on time for the NCS Championship Meet. However, Cruickshank, as Heritage Athletic Director, appealed to the then-current NCS Commissioner and was granted an exception to allow the Heritage swimmers to compete in the NCS Championship. This fact isn’t lost on the swimming community and many high school coaches have reached out the NCS Commissioner to have the 13 Acalanes swimmers reinstated for NCS Championship just as Heritage swimmers were allowed to compete in a similar situation.
End of update.
“This system provides no confirmation, no proof of receipt, no acknowledgment, and no submit button,” wrote Lauren Etnyre, the older sister of one of the team members.
Etnyre says the team has advocated for an exception with the NCS for two days, but the officials have stood firm.
In February, Longmeadow High School swimmer Benjamin Lyons won a case against the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) that resulted in him being allowed to compete at the state meet after his coach had a similar entry error.
Swim team members posted a video on YouTube voicing their frustration with the situation:
Of the 13 swimmers who qualified for the North Coast Section meet, eight are seniors, meaning the competition marks their last chance to swim for their high school—not to mention it’s the meet they’ve had their eyes on all season.
The CIF Section meets are used as the sole qualifiers for the CIF State Championships, which take place one week later.
The swimmers who qualified for the Section meet include:
Girls:
- Freshman Anna Motes
- Freshman Kendall Lee
- Sophomore Audrey Martin
- Sophomore Ella Del Rosario
- Junior Sadie Suppiger
- Senior Liv Hoppe
- Senior Taryn Veronda
- Senior Brooklyn Plomp
- Senior Sadie Hendrickson
Boys:
- Senior Parker Etnyre
- Senior Hans Ramirez
- Senior Cale Hanson
- Senior Alex Butler
Last year, Acalanes qualified for the State Championships in the girls’ 400 free relay, with both Suppiger and Del Rosario competing.
You can read more about the swimmers and which events they qualified in here.
The North Coast Section Championships start Wednesday with the diving competition before swimming prelims run Friday and finals on Saturday from the Concord Community Pool in Concord, California.
Interesting because the Acalanes women show up on meet mobile. It truly seems like there is some technical error 🤔
The high school coach failed to enter the swimmers (either RJ or Brett). There was no technical error. NCS is not at fault when a coach doesn’t do their job and enter any swimmers before the deadline. It is crazy how fast people/the internet are to jump on something. It’s even worse that the coach that made an honest mistake, can’t own it and chooses to play victim instead of telling the truth to his swimmers out the gate and causes all this media mess.
Respectfully he did own it. He’s been on the news specially saying “It’s my fault.” He enetered his divers in earlier that week ok. He’s been logged into the system since March so not abundantly apparent he had to log in again. There was a meet on Saturday so times couldn’t be entered in until after that. He had to attend a funeral in Oregon (the school is in California) but he did attempt to enter times Sunday morning before the 1pm deadline. He had not realized internet was not functional and entries were not committed. He attempted to email NCS twice once he found out his there was an issue. Monday they said sorry but no. Precedent shows that… Read more »
Marisa, it doesn’t sound like you’ve done NCS entries before. If you had, you would know why some coaches feel he’s still not really owning it. Someone has told you what he supposedly did, but that’s not how the system actually works. First, you know instantly whether an entry has gone through. You enter the time, you click submit on that ONE entry, and it appears instantly on the chart. Didn’t know he had to log in again? What? If he wasn’t logged in, nothing would work. And presumably some of these state-destined swimmers had NCS consideration times well before Saturday. NCS entries have been open for weeks and weeks. You can enter a swimmer whenever they make a consideration… Read more »
Please let them swim. Errors happen. No blame no shame. Just allow them to swim they have qualified and meet the SWIM requirements and standards.
What a stupid bloody sport this is now
Please do not penalize the kids, or let this get caught up in red tape preventing them from competing.
One beautiful thing about swimming is that the stopwatch/timer does not lie. Let them settle it in the pool.
it’s up to the other schools to protest and boycott the meet. Not much else can be done.
Other schools should not boycott the meet just because another school made an error and failed to enter the meet correctly. It had confirmed to be the coaches fault and no other schools should mess up their taper and chance to swim and compete because of the error.
It’s becoming difficult to overlook the lack of accountability from the coach. Either way, I do agree the kids should swim. I do know he admitted to not sending the entries, yet the change.org created just today still maintains that he feels he did send them. So which is it? These kids deserve to be given the truth, and from that learn how to give grace when mistakes are made. All they are learning is how to skirt responsibility and gaslight when you don’t get your way.
We’ve been in personal contact with the coach. Note, we have legit nothing to gain from this. We have no swimmers, no kids or anything in the school. Our daughter was the previous student body president at the high school so we know community members there. We have no swimmers in the meet. I created the petition on behalf of the kids because frankly, no skin off my back and unlike the parents who have kids in the meet including teachers at our school, I’m not working today and can focus on this, literally just an empath admin. So based on that… background. Coach made the entries. Noticed something was off. Tried to follow up both Sunday and Monday (so… Read more »
I can appreciate your dedication to the swimmers. However, have you seen the school communications on this matter yourself?
Yes. We have been in personal communication with AUSD Superintendent, Acalanes Principal, Acalanes Athletic Director and of course, Acalanes coach and then helped draft letters. Not because we want any drama, just to ensure we understood the facts and got the proper information out to people. I just type… As of 6 PM tonight we don’t have any specific update.
In other news, US Olympic Swim bad ass and previous US Olympic Swim Team Captain and 2024 Backstroke GOLD medal hopeful RYAN MURPHY signed the petition to let these kids swim. He has better things to do than to mess with this. Clearly the swim community thinks NCS should just add a heat and #LetDonsSwim