With swimmers coming back to school and dual meet racing after mid-season invites, winter break, and tough training, sometimes it’s easier to switch things up.
That’s exactly what the plan is for the upcoming Akron v. Duquesne women’s dual meet this Saturday, January 12th, which will be streamed live on ESPN+.
In a non-traditional format, teams will have an already-in-place lineup for each event. Each event, as the pre-selected swimmers are behind the blocks, the scorers’ table will draw an event from the mystery hat, announce it, and then those swimmers will race that event. That moment will be the first the swimmer will learn of their event.
“Dave and I came up with this concept a few days ago and thought it would be an excellent challenge for our swimmers,” said head coach Brian Peresie. “Our team is very excited, anxious and pumped for this meet. For me, it will be interesting to watch how the team tackles this challenge. I’m curious to see what we learn about ourselves through this experience. I have no idea what the outcome will ultimately be, but I am confident we will have a lot to talk about once the water goes calm.”
This kind of format means that a distance swimmer from Akron could be behind the blocks against a sprint freestyler from Duquense, and the event being called is a 200 breast.
Swim fans may remember last semester when Auburn and Virginia had a similar ‘mystery’ dual meet, only the mystery was a bit different. For that meet, swimmers knew what 2 or 3 individual events they had for the day, they just didn’t know when they’d be racing that event. For this meet, swimmers know when they have their events, but they don’t know what the event is until they’re stepping on the blocks.
Swimmers may compete in a maximum of four events. Either two relays and two individual events, or one relay and three individual events.
Order of Events
Event 1 – 1 Meter Diving
Event 2 – 3 Meter Diving
Event 3 – 200 Medley Relay
Events 4-12 – Mystery
Event 13 – 200 Free Relay
Events 14-21 – Mystery
Event 22 – 400 Medley Relay
Mystery events are as follows:
50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 Freestyle
50, 100, 200, Fly, Back, Breast
100, 200, 400 IM
Stole this idea from the UVa – Auburn dual meet in the fall semester….
Different format. In UVA-Auburn, swimmers knew what races they’d swim, just not the order. In this meet, they knew neither the event nor the order.
I love it! At this point in the year (right before focus will shift to taper/ conference meet and real racing) this is fun and could possibly help with morale. As a sprinter, I was never happy with my times in early Jan meets after training over the break, but if I did a 500 Free or 100 breast (VERY off events) and went a best time, that would have made me pretty happy. I love this idea and the strategy would probably be pretty fun for coaches. Put a distance swimmer, a sprinter, a breaststroker and someone with good underwaters in each event, or if you get behind, load one event with all sprinters hoping for a 50, or… Read more »
I love this idea–this actually sounds fun!
When is the meet?
Are the event draws with replacement?
Don’t know why you got the downvote. To ask your question another way, if they choose 50 free first, does 50 free then go back into the hat so it might be drawn again, or is each event removed once it has been swum?