2019 NCSA Age Group Champs
By Reach for the Wall Staff
The YMCA pool in Orlando, Florida has been busy over the last two weeks. First, it hosted the NCSA Junior National Championships (March 19-23), and this week it hosts the NCSA Age Group Championships (March 27-30).
PVS age group swimmers (i.e., ages 10 & under, 11-12, 13-14) historically have focused on the local PVS age group championship meet (e.g., Junior Olympics or JOs). Increasingly, PVS clubs are sending their age group swimmers to “national” age group meets in order to enable more kids on the team to participate in a post-JO’s championship format meet, to allow kids to swim in more events than they can at Zones, and/or to expose them to “national” competition from around the U.S. (vs. competition only from within the Eastern Zone). For PVS clubs, these “national” age group meets include the NCSA Age Group Swimming Championships in Orlando, Florida this week (March 27-30) and the NASA Showcase Classic in Clearwater, Florida (April 10-13).
Rockville Montgomery (RMSC) has placed 1st in the team scoring the past two years and are competing again this year.
Teams attending:
- Rockville Montgomery (RMSC)
- Nation’s Capital (NCAP)
- Arlington Aquatics (AAC)
- Machine Aquatics (Mach)
- Snow Swimming (Snow)
Many people have been asking what the Age Group Champs meet entailed, here’s the rundown on the format:
All 10 & Under events will be swum in the morning, no finals. The competition in that course will stop after each event sequence to award the 10 & Under event from that sequence.
11-12 & 13-14 Age Group individual events are prelim-finals with the exception of 11-12 400 IM, 500 Free, 13-14 400 IM, 500 Free and 1650 Free. These events will be swum as timed finals with the fastest heat (8 swimmers) swum at night with the finals. Relays are timed finals, top two heats (16 teams) are swum in the finals session, and the remainder will be swum in the preliminary session. With the exception of the distance events which are swum as timed finals events, swimmers will advance to finals using the following format, A Final: Top 8 fastest swimmers from the preliminaries. B Final: Next 8 fastest swimmers from the preliminaries regardless of age. C Final: Next 8 fastest swimmers in the bottom of the age group (11 & 13 year olds respectively)
The NCSA Age Group Champs in Orlando (the first of these national age group meets) starts today, and below is key information about this meet:
If you are wondering, “what’s the difference between this week’s NCSA Age Group Champs and last week’s NCSA Junior Nationals?”, the former is for qualified age group (i.e., younger) swimmers while the latter is (mostly) for qualified high school swimmers.
Good luck to those PVS swimmers at NCSA Age Group Champs. We will periodically check in on their progress over the next 4 days.