The Facts about Senior Swimming in America

For the last few months I have been espousing a very critical point of view regarding senior swimming in America.  I believe that USA Swimming dropped the ball when, in 2001, they changed the progression of senior swimming. Please see my earlier entries:

• Save Senior Swimming in the USA
• Senior Swimming in America - The Progression We Should Be Following

To sum it up, I believe that the USA Swimming Senior Development Committee has made it more difficult for an LSC level senior swimmer to progress to the National ranks.  Please read those earlier blog entries for the total breakdown of the former and current progressions and why I dislike the current progression.

One of the effects of the current progression is that it holds back our younger senior swimmers.  It may even cause attrition within our sport.  "But Cliff", you say,  "what facts do you have to back up your thesis?"

Well, I have crunched the numbers for each of the following USA Swimming National Teams (these are the only lists I could find within the time period of the current progression):

Over the years, National Team has aged.  The Women seem to be relatively unaffected ranging from an average age of 21.6 to 21.9 (actually dipping to 19.8 in the 2006 Pan Pacs).  On the other hand, the average age of the men has risen dramatically, from 21.3 to 24.8.....whoa!!!

Now, in all fairness, I believe that Title IX may be affecting our men's numbers.  Having said that, with the popularity of heros like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, you would think that it might balance out Title IX.  I really think that our progression of championship meets is playing a significant roll in the aging of our team.  Assuming Phelps and Lochte are nearly done, we are going to be in big trouble by the time the 2016 Rio games come along.

The time to act is now!  Bring back the Region Championships....bring back the three tiered Junior National format!  We can keep Sectionals, but we need to bring back those smaller steps in the progression.  Without those steps we create an atmosphere in which only the early bloomers thrive.

We need the USA Swimming Senior Development Committee stop just thinking about collegiate age swimmers and the super talented early developers.  We need to cultivate senior swimming holistically...bring along every level of senior swimming in our country.

Senior Swimming in America - The Progression We Should be Following

In 2001 I attended the Senior Development Committee meeting (at the USAS Convention) that handicapped senior swimming in America.

Prior to that meeting the progression of senior swimming in USA Swimming was as follows:

• LSC Senior Championship
• Region Senior Championship
• Junior Nationals (West/Southeast/Northeast)
• US Open
• Nationals

The progression seemed to work well in that the incremental steps from one championship were such that relatively even.  A similar percentage of swimmers would qualify for the next meet in the progression.  If %x of swimmers at the Region level qualified for Jr's, you could expect approximately the same percentage at Jr's to qualify for Nationals.

On 9/11 the Senior Development Committee decided to mothball Jr's and replace it with Sectionals.  Oh they eventually brought Jr's back but they eliminated the West, Southeast, and Northeast versions of the meet and made a super fast single meet.  In doing so, they made the step from Jr's down to the next meet (in this case Sectionals) huge, effectively destroying the progression.

That was not the way it was supposed to be when those of us in the peanut gallery left the meeting on 9/11.  Our understanding on that day was that there would be a Sectional series each spring, but Jr's (the 3 meet format) would remain intact every summer.  Obviously this is not the way things turned out.  It would seem that the members of the committee at the time decided it was too inconvenient, for their big time programs, to have to travel to two separate locations every summer for Jr's and Nationals.  I agree that it may be inconvenient for the larger "powerhouse" teams to travel to two different meets locales.  But for most teams, that is a problem we would love to have to deal with.  

I see that while at least one person from 2001 is still on the committee, there are at least a couple newer committee members who actually work with non-college age swimmers and are people who's values I trust.  Perhaps we could convince the 2011 Senior Development Committee to consider balancing the steps toward elite senior swimming.  Not all of us have built in National teams in our programs...we have to develop ours the old fashioned way.