Aside from the Sectional Championships themselves, the biggest story out of California high school swimming in May is the looming inaugural California High School State Championship meet that has received mixed responses from across the state.
In the Central Coast Section, Darren Sabedra of the San Jose Mercury News reports that the section’s top swimmers had about a 50% level of commitment.
Girls’ 200 and 500 yard freestyle champion (1:46.49/4:45.83) Jennifer Campbell is in for the state meet, as is sophomore and 50 free/100 breast champion ( 23.18/1:02.04) Grace Zhao.
The qualified swimmers from St. Francis will go as well, according to the article.
But the section’s biggest male star, Aidan Burns, is sitting the state meet out after winning the 500 free on Saturday (4:24.19). While the rest of the Bellarmine seniors are skipping due to having graduation ceremonies the morning of the meet, Burns says his pass is more about beginning to focus on the long course season.
Burns, who is a member of the USA Swimming Junior National Team, will have an opportunity to qualify for the Junior World Championships team at this summer’s USA Swimming National Championship meet in San Antonio.
To read more about Burns’ reasons, see the full article here.
The state meet will take a few years to catch on. They should shorten the season one week, so the season doesn’t impact LCM, as it does now. Once the full state meet becomes more popular, then the top swimmers won’t fully taper for the mega-sectional meets like they do now.
Swimming is different from Track and Field since it has the heavily training and then the taper. I bet in Track and Field the kids go to state even in lieu of high school graduation ceremony since it would be the most important meet but with swimming since its harder to have a peak performance again like Track and Field its not as important.