Fortunately, the state of South Carolina safely avoided being pounded head-on by recent Hurricane Joaquin, but the state is still experiencing record rainfall, leading to mega flooding throughout the state. Reports of bridges collapsing, roads being closed off and dams overflowing have caused safety to be of primary concern for citizens all over the state.
As such, the South Carolina High School Class AAA and AAAA swim meets are at risk of being postponed. Both meets are slated to take place at the Carolina Natatorium on the campus of the University of South Carolina on Saturday, October 10th, with the AAA scheduled for the morning and AAAA set for the evening. But, as of today, the SC High School League is ‘closely monitoring’ the flooding situation and potential contingency plans for postponement or rescheduling are being discussed.
South Carolina remains in a state of emergency and will provide updates as they become available.
The SCHSL championships have been rescheduled to October 17th. SCISA still October 10th as of now.
Also unusual about high school swimming in SC is that the state championships are timed finals.
As noted by Braden, swimming is a fall sport here in South Carolina. HS practice typically starts in the first week of August and the season runs through the second week of October. Super short and sweet. Very few high schools in South Carolina have pools of their own, let alone indoor pools. Many HS teams actually swim in neighborhood pools which creates its own set of problems as some of the pools are SCY and some are SCM. It is definitely unusual for a high school sport here but we deal with it.
If a swimming championship is canceled due to flooding, that would be the height of irony.
how the heck is the state championship meet on Oct. 10th?
Durham – has to do with very limited indoor pool space in South Carolina is what I’ve always been told. More-or-less, everyone’s practicing at outdoor, unheated country club pools.
Swimming is a fall sport in SC because there are not enough indoor/heated pools for all the teams to use during the winter. And it starts to get cold in October, so dragging the season out any longer would require teams to practice in unheated, dangerously cold pools in chilly weather conditions.