Meet Format
The National Club Swimming Association, or NCSA has announced a slight tweak to the 2012 version of their Spring Junior National Championship meet. This meet, which is independent of USA Swimming (though times scored here count for USA Swimming), is sort of a 3rd, alternative Junior Nationals meet for the winter season that is attended annually by many of the country’s top swimmers. The meet is especially popular with swimmers from states like Texas and Virginia, where USA Swimming’s December Junior National Championship meet falls right in the middle of peak training for the high school season.
This year, the NCSA has changed the course-format for the meet that is typically held in yards. Prelims will be swum in yards with finals the pool being rotated and swum in long course meters. This is a crucial move based on USA Swimming’s decision to only allow long course meters entry times for that summer’s U.S. Open meet. Now, these young swimmers will have a good tapered opportunity to achieve qualifying marks and allow themselves the ability to build into the meters season and not have to taper prior to the U.S. Open. That 2012 U.S. Open will be the qualifying meet for the 2012-2013 USA Swimming Jr. National Team.
USA Swimming has chosen to leave it’s 2011 Junior National Championship meet in Austin as a short course meet, though the day afterwards they will host a one-day”long course invitational” to give swimmers the opportunity to make their Olympic Trials/U.S. Open qualifying times (they are the same cuts). USA Swimming’s senior nationals in Atlanta have been changed to a long course format from their usual yards course.
The meet is attended by some of the top young swimmers every year. Amongst the stars last year where recent Cal commit, and 100 back National High School Record holder, Rachel Bootsma and Clay Youngquist, the #1 recruit in the class of 2011 for Texas.
Updated Meet Details:
2012 NCSA Junior Nationals
March 20-24, 2012
Orlando, FL
2011 Qualifying Standards (2012 Standards have not yet been released)
Team Trip to Osaka, Japan
An NCSA All-American was invited by the Itomon Swim School is Osaka, Japan to join them for a week-long adventure of training and competition in the Far East, which culminated this weekend with a tri-meet between the Itomon swimmers and the NCSA swimmers, with appearances from the Melbourne Vicentre Swim Club, one of Australia’s top youth programs.
This is the follow-up to the team’s trip to Ireland last year, and while the NCSA usually only takes these trips once every three years, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go this year. Making the situation even better was the fact that Itomon covered all of the team’s expenses while in Japan, requiring the NCSA to only pick up the tab for airfare.
Click here to see the full results from that meet, translated courtesy of Google.