After announcing that the traditional national-level meet schedule would be changed due to COVID-19 earlier this year, USA Swimming has now put out an updated meet schedule for 2020 that includes three different competitions. It also announced that it plans to continue the 2021 Pro Swim Series as planned, with a reaffirmation of the dates and locations to be released soon.
The first competition slated to occur will be a three-month-long virtual meet that will begin in October. The “National Leaderboard” will track times swum across the country, in both sanctioned and non-sanctioned formats, with top swims being recognized at the end of each month.
This competion will be the second one held by USA Swimming in a virtual format, following their Speedo Swim Again Virtual Series that began September 7th and will finish on October 11th. The meet, which offers an overall leaderboard as well as awarding prizes to teams based on their rankings within team size based divisions, was created to allow athletes to compete without travel.
The second competition slated to take place in 2020 is a multi-venue U.S. Open which will occur between November 12-14. The meet will be held at 8-10 undisclosed venues, with four timed finals sessions being held over three days. The meet will be held in a long course meter format.
Traditionally the U.S. Open has been held in early December, making this years mid-November date a change from past iterations of the meet. The meet, which had previously been known as the Winter National Championships, has typically been held in the short course pool with the exception of during Olympic years. The name change and use of long course meters this year may signal a permanent move to the long course pool.
To end the year USA Swimming will host a second multi-site meet, the 18&Under Winter Championships. The short course yards meet will also have multiple sanctioned sites across the country and will take place between December 1-13th.
In April USA Swimming had announced tentatively that it would be holding the Winter Juniors meet between December 9-12th, split between two locations, Atlanta, Georgia and Dallas, Texas, as the meet had been run in the past. While the meet will still occur at roughly the same time, it will now allow teams to compete with significantly less travel.
While no changes to the formatting of the 2021 Pro Swim Series have been announced yet, USA Swimming did announce it would be making a large alteration in qualification times earlier this summer. The first stop of the series is slatted to take place January 13-16 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Full USA Swimming Release:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Following thoughtful assessment, USA Swimming, the national governing body for the sport of swimming in the United States, today announced changes to its 2020 national events calendar. Previously announced competitions will be replaced with a three-month virtual race leaderboard, a multi-site Toyota U.S. Open event and a decentralized 2020 18&Under Winter Championships.
Beginning in October, USA Swimming will introduce the National Leaderboard, a virtual competition format for swimmers from coast to coast. Similar to the Speedo Swim Again Series, the National Leaderboard series will consist of sanctioned and non-sanctioned long-course meter, short-course meter and short-course yard results, though the leaderboard will be focused on individual swimmers. Top performances will then be recognized at the end of each competition month.
In an effort to re-introduce in-person competition, but limit travel as best possible for athletes, the Toyota U.S. Open will be hosted on November 12-14, 2020, across multiple sites nationwide. The long-course meter event will feature athletes competing in 8-10 venues, with approximately 100 swimmers at each venue. Events will consist of four-timed final sessions over three days. On par with National-level events, all swimmers who have one or more qualifying standards may enter these meets through USA Swimming’s Online Meet Entry system on a first-come basis until the entry cap is reached. Current U.S. National Team Members or U.S. National Junior Team Members will be provided with priority registration. Sites for the 2020 Toyota U.S. Open will be announced as soon as available.
Rounding out the year will be the 2020 18&Under Winter Championships, featuring a distributed championships format, allowing swimmers to compete in multiple sanctioned sites across the country. The event will take place December 1-13, 2020 and hosted by USA Swimming member clubs in conjunction with their Local Swimming Committee (LSC). Competition will be conducted in short-course yards. Results will be aggregated, and medals and team awards will be sent from USA Swimming following the conclusion of the event. Further details regarding the 2020 18&Under Winter Championships are being shared with LSCs, who in turn will share it within their communities as information becomes available.
The organization intends to proceed with the 2021 TYR Pro Swim Series in the new year and will reaffirm dates and locations in the coming weeks.
Toyota US Open info on USA swimming site says time standards are “USA Swimming Summer Junior National Standards” … is this the same as the Speedo Summer Championships standards? What are the time standards for an 18&under swimmer?
From the USA Swimming press release…100 swimmers per site multiplied by the 8 to 10 sites seems like a lot fewer entrants than last year’s meet. Given qualification times, seems like they’re going to have to turn away a lot of athletes. How will they choose who gets in? FCFS? Times? Thanks for any insights.
Why wouldn’t they count times from the start of this season? (September 1) in with the national leader board.
Why are we not altitude adjusting? Pots high-altitude teams at a disadvantage.
This makes no sense – 70% of the National Team will be in Budapest. Why move from December?
National team coaches ARE NOT happy about this. Those ISL swimmers planned on racing LCM in December.
In regards to the new format Winter Jrs., a couple of thoughts.
First, for the 18 & U parents that are looking at this as the last chance to get their kiddos a college offer, you can bet they will be scouring the internet for the fastest pool WITH a meet to enter their child- regardless of location.
Second, it appears that they will be able to swim in as many individual meets as they want during the Dec. 1-13 time period (with only the fastest time achieved in an event counting toward the final standings). If you’ve got a specialist swimmer (ie 100Br or 50Fr), it may pay off to enter in 2 or 3 meets and swim… Read more »
meets will be capped for the max swimmers allowed per local ordinances. Priority will be given to swimmers within the LSC.
Certainly each individual LSC will have to make decisions regarding locale (especially with many college campuses being closed during December this year due to CoVID restrictions) and the varying number of participants allowed at the various meets due to each individual state’s local ordinances. To compound this, they now only have approximately 10 weeks to make those arrangements.
However, I still think if you are lucky enough to be in an LSC sponsoring multiple meets (for example, due to participant limits) it behooves you to have your child entered in as many meets as possible.
Conversely, if your LSC limits your swimmer to one qualifying meet even though they are sponsoring multiple meets, it is essential to make sure… Read more »
Will medals for the 18&u championships still be separated by East and West?