Over the past several seasons, particularly in the NESCAC, suiting and even resting for January swims has become common place. Some of my D1 swimmers are “suiting up” every meet. I do wonder if lighting up these January dual meets doesn’t take something off later meets including NCAAs. No doubt it is a huge accomplishment to break an NCAA record, never mind in January, and likely Fadely will win the 100 breast handily in March. Will it take anything away from her other swims at NCAAs?
And of course that’s only one side of what you’re saying. The other thing to look at is the rate of records falling at Nationals. Do we see a late season slowdown after all these red-line swims during the season? I think we have the sense that records are falling at nationals at an amazing pace over the last several years. But I don’t know that we’ve ever quantified that. What’s the normal amount of records to fall at a division 3 nationals? That’s a question worth answering too.
I think that’s a really interesting observation, and I definitely get that sense that we are at some sort of frontier. One interesting thing we might be able to measure is how often records are getting broken in the regular season. We had Frank Applebaum last year. I think a couple years back David Fitch set a new butterfly record in November. It’s a historical and objective question, and might be something worth digging into
Creative and entertaining as always and so great to recognize a great swim. Would you consider a permanent link somewhere on the site to the current SRS tables? Thanks!
Over the past several seasons, particularly in the NESCAC, suiting and even resting for January swims has become common place. Some of my D1 swimmers are “suiting up” every meet. I do wonder if lighting up these January dual meets doesn’t take something off later meets including NCAAs. No doubt it is a huge accomplishment to break an NCAA record, never mind in January, and likely Fadely will win the 100 breast handily in March. Will it take anything away from her other swims at NCAAs?
And of course that’s only one side of what you’re saying. The other thing to look at is the rate of records falling at Nationals. Do we see a late season slowdown after all these red-line swims during the season? I think we have the sense that records are falling at nationals at an amazing pace over the last several years. But I don’t know that we’ve ever quantified that. What’s the normal amount of records to fall at a division 3 nationals? That’s a question worth answering too.
I think that’s a really interesting observation, and I definitely get that sense that we are at some sort of frontier. One interesting thing we might be able to measure is how often records are getting broken in the regular season. We had Frank Applebaum last year. I think a couple years back David Fitch set a new butterfly record in November. It’s a historical and objective question, and might be something worth digging into
Creative and entertaining as always and so great to recognize a great swim. Would you consider a permanent link somewhere on the site to the current SRS tables? Thanks!
OK - should be visible for all - a tab on the top navigation bar that says SRS Table Direct Link
Yup. Good idea. I will try to figure that out.