The NCAA has released their pre-selection psych sheets for the 2014 men’s and women’s Division III NCAA Championship meets that will run from March 19th to 22nd in Indianapolis, Indiana.
While these lists do not indicate, and go well beyond, the numbers of swimmers who are actually invited to NCAA’s, they are a first taste of who is opting to swim which events.
For example, Wheaton College’s Kirsty Nitz, who has the second-best time in the Division this year in the 50 free, has opted for a schedule of the 100 free, 100 fly, and 100 backstroke instead. She won the 50 free NCAA title last year as a freshman, but has chosen not to defend it this year.
Depauw’s Casey Hooker, who is 5th-best among NCAA Division III championship-eligible teams in the 100 fly, instead swimming the 200 free, the 200 fly, and the 500 free: where he’s seeded only 17th.
Kenyon freshman Trevor Manz had some options, but he has chosen to race the 400 IM, the 100 breaststroke, and the 200 breaststroke (he’s a top three seed in all).
Johns Nopkins’ Taylor Kitayama is swimming the 100 back, the 200 back, and the 100 fly – with that 3rd entry being just the 13th seed. That’s instead of swimming the 200 IM, where she would be the 5th seed.
Note that these psych sheets could have some errors; there’s usually a team or a swimmer who accidentally gets over looked in its assembly by USA Swimming and the NCAA, so don’t be surprised if revisions come before they are finalized.
They took through lines 19-21 in every event this year, men and women.
Unofficially*
Your getting into the meet as a top 16 relay automatically. That is not a great thing for the individuals who may be seated from 10th to 16th, because they get left out of the meet even though they have a top 16 time in an individual event. It really is not fair because they are taking a lot of kids on relays that don’t even qualify with b cuts and cannot even swim individually but maybe part of a fast relay because of a fast individual swimmer who puts them over the top. It is kind of sad that the NCAA does not take the first 16 qualifiers for every event, which would be much more fair.
This looks to be a very close contest (again) between Kenyon and Denison on the men’s side. It could be a replay of NCAC conference where Kenyon beat Denison in swimming but the Denison divers carried the day. The outcome of the diving qualifier is critical to the outcome of the meet.
I also suspect that neither teams rested their core national team members at conference and the team with the “better” taper could win. Kenyon has the edge here because they have more swimmers that can “move up” and score (a full squad basically) while Denison is bringing far less swimmers.
On the women’s side Emory is much deeper than Denison or Kenyon and is the favorite to repeat.
Where is the 19.80 in the 50 free I witnessed at the CCC meet at F&M?
Mark – Dickinson isn’t entered on here…we weren’t sure if that was an error, or if Dickinson didn’t swim NCAA’s for some reason…but it’s not listed on their schedule.
That would be tragic. What the heck…. ?
The DC, Dickinson College, team will NOT be at the NCAA meet. I just called the coach and he confirmed that they will not be attending. He was not at liberty to explain. I expressed my congrats for some very fast swimming from his squad this past weekend at the CCC Meet and felt that his top guy would be missed greatly at the NCAA D3 meet.
I am just a swim fan, so he does not really owe me any other explanation.
Humm…
I was also wondering how far down they are going to go in the individual events this year does anyone have the answer?
D3Swimfan – it’s hard to say yet. Someone could calculate it out, but until there’s more certainty that all of the names and numbers on that list are finalized, it would be a bit of a ‘fool’s errand,’ so to speak.
Projections to agonize over for the next 14 hours… Schiller at the bottom of page 4 and top of page 5 has listed out all the men’s and women’s invitees.
http://d3swimming.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6607&start=45
You get invited in one event you swim all three – so Weik is safe, as is anyone else who has a qualifying time.
Weik is 3rd in mile. That will get him in the meet…..he could be 50th in the 4IM and 500 free and it would not matter.
I bet he has been training through the entire year…quest to break 15.
No matter how you cut it, I think Al Weik might be on the bubble in both the 500 free and 400 IM (18th and 17th position respectively)–though he might sneak in this year because of the rediculously fast “A” qualifying times. Has anyone heard what is up with him this year– in previous years he always had safe qualifying times posted?