USA Swimming’s senior Development Committee at this week’s US Aquatics Sports Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, has voted to recommend adding a 4th meet to its “Futures” series.
2015 was the inaugural year for this long course transitional meet, and it was instantly popular with between 40 and 80 swimmers racing in each event. In 2015, though, there were only 3 meets, and the meet hosts all happened to fall on edges of their respective regions (as demonstrated in the map above).
2015 hosts
- Greensboro, North Carolina (Greensboro Aquatic Center)
- Mt. Hood, Oregon (Mt. Hood Aquatic Center)
- West Lafayette, Indiana (Purdue University)
While the 2016 hosts haven’t been made public yet, the locations of the 2015 hosts created travel challenges for some – specifically, swimmers from the Gulf LSC (Houston) had to travel more than 2,000 miles to hit their site. A list of participation statistics by LSC is not available, but a quick skim shows limited participation from many of these far-off regions – though that wasn’t publicly cited as a region to add a 4th meet.
These meets are designed as a transitional meet for swimmers to make the jump from Sectional championships to Junior National and Senior National Championships, and along that vein, the meets also have a limit on the speed allowed at the meet. In 2015, swimmers who had one or more qualifying times for the U.S. National Championships were ineligible to compete at the Futures meets; in 2016, that will be replaced with swimmers who have one or more U.S. Open standards (which historically have been the same as the Olympic Trials standards in long course, but also often allow short course yards times for qualification as well).
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Yeah, when are these cuts/locations/dates going to be released??
Does anyone know the dates of the 2016 Futures meets? Trying to plan an end of the summer trip to Europe and would love to book tickets early. Thanks!
If the meet is supposed to be a transition meet for swimmers just working through the jump from Sectionals to Juniors, why in the world would swimmers with Trials cuts be allowed at this meet. Seems like it defeats the purpose. The whole point is to allow these swimmers a chance to final and compete for a win at a high level meet. If a bunch of faster folks show up looking to beat up on lesser competition, it makes the whole thing useless. I think that will likely be a bigger deterrent to their attendance than location of the pool.
actually, the US Open standards are about the same as OT cuts. At least they were last time I checked. I still think Futures should be limited to non-nationals qualifiers and perhaps only swimmers 19 and under with less than two Jr cuts. If it’s a transition meet it should look like one.
You’re right, in 2012 they were. Haven’t seen 2016 standards yet.