The USA Swimming Phillips 66 National Championships are coming to Avery Aquatic Center in Palo Alto, California, from July 31 to August 4. Daily ticket packages are on sale now. Adult tickets cost $45 while youth/senior tickets are available for $35. Ticket prices are set to increase on July 1.
Prices are up from 2018, when fans could purchase full day tickets for $15 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors. All-session tickets, which are not available for the 2019 event, were $60 for adults last year and $48 for students and seniors.
- Tickets for the meet can be purchased here.
More than 1,200 athletes will participate in 35 events across the five-day event. Action begins daily at 9a .m. PT and finals will be contested each night at 5 p.m. PT.
The meet follows the World University Games (July 4-10 in Naples, Italy) and FINA World Championships (July 21st-28th in Gwangju, South Korea) and sets the table for the Pan American Games (Aug. 6-10 in Lima, Peru) and World Junior Championships (Aug. 20-25 in Budapest, Hungary). The National Championships will offer a preview of the 2020 Olympic Team Trials, which are slated 11 months later, beginning June 21 in Omaha, Nebraska.
A handful of current U.S. National team members have earned their spots in more than 10 events. On the women’s side, Alex Walsh has punched her ticket into 16 events, followed by Ella Eastin (12) and Brooke Forde (11). On the men’s side, Carson Foster (15), Andrew Seliskar (12) and Michael Andrew (10), could also appear in 10 or more events.
Due to the congested schedule, it is unknown which Team USA stars will participate in the 2019 Nationals, but anything can happen as evidenced by the results a year ago. At the 2018 Nationals, Kathleen Baker notched a world record time in the 100 back and Ryan Murphy clocked an American record in the 50 back among several record-breaking performances on the week.
The expenses for USAS National level meets have gotten absolutely ridiculous!! The hotels in Palo Alto are $280/night ON AVERAGE, and I’m talking about the ones that USAS has reserved for the event! Spectator tickets are $45 per day. This meet is 5 days – so, for my husband and I to attend to support our swimmer it will cost us $450 just to get in the door. At the end of the day, this meet will cost us around $3500! Airfare, hotel, meals, event tickets. Who’s got that kind of money to spend on a swim meet?????? This. Is. Not. Right!
Take a drive down to Big Sur after the meet. That place always relaxes me.
The swimming section in Gwangju is held from 21 st to 28th july – and not from 12th to 18th .
I was interested in how many events Alex Walsh didn’t qualify for if she did qualify for 16. According to this list of time standards (https://www.usaswimming.org/Home/times/time-standards), there are only 14 individual events. Does the 16 events include her team qualifying for relays? Which event has she not qualified for? I was guessing the 1500, just because she maybe hasn’t swum it recently or often.
Actually I don’t think the price is that bad for a reserved seat for both prelims and finals. However the fact that they make you pay for both sessions is just really not fan friendly. I’m assuming correctly that the daily ticket is good for both sessions? Prelims should just be 100% general admission for $15 and sit wherever you want. Finals okay charge higher price for the reserve seats. But really the saddest thing is that there is only about 1200 seats being sold per a day. It’s 2019 and we only have seating for 1200 people at our national championship? Does anyone else think that is pathetic? Does USA Swimming even have a marketing department? The reserve seating… Read more »
I wouldn’t expect many big name stars attending. In 2011, this meet was also held at Stanford immediately after the 2011 Worlds in Shanghai. The only “names” I remember coming to this meet were Ryan Lochte (came for a day or so for contractual reasons) and the up-and-coming 16 year old Missy Franklin. Lochte had an outstanding meet at Worlds but he was fried when he got here (but my respect for him went up enormously because he showed up anyway and signed a ton of autographs for his fans!
Let’s hope it’s not 1200 athletes, or we will have a repeat of 2011. That was awful.
Elaborate please I seem to be out of the loop
same here , what happened ?
Early bird rate of $45 per session?!? At a meet where I’m guessing we won’t see a lot of big names??
Everything costs 10x of what it should cost in Palo Alto
Just a small bottle of water… Stanford charges 5$ for. And you will be searched prior to entering the facility. Not JOKING here.
I had to throw my burrito away last summer in Irvine when I tried to walk in with my own food. If had know ahead of time I would have tried to hide it better
I’m guessing you don’t like the $17 beers at Warriors games
I am expecting this to be the new norm under the current guy. Nevermind that this is a member organization formed to serve its members not fleece them to pay higher administrative salaries. Members should all receive a discount code by email to buy tickets at half price. I’ll be waiting.
@Steve: More so than you think.
Does USA Swimming get the money or Alto Swim Club?