Mid-American Conference Will Host 2021 Conference Championships After NCAAs

The Mid-American Conference (MAC) has announced its plan for the 2020-2021 NCAA swimming & diving season.

The plan, approved by the MAC Directors of Athletics on Friday, includes recommendations for Wrestling and Men’s and Women’s Swimming to conduct the 2020-21 season, while mitigating health and safety concerns related to COVID-19.

The MAC Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving seasons will begin competition on November 5th. Both the men’s and women’s Conference championships will pushed back (Men: April 8-10, Women: April 15-17) to accompany the delayed start date. Student-Athletes will remain eligible to compete at the NCAA Championships held in March, though that meet would come before the conference championship meet.

The men’s meet will be hosted April 8-10, 2021 and the women’s meet will be hosted April 15-17, 2021.

The timing is significant because, besides being after the NCAA Championships, the schedule has the women’s meet a week after the men’s meet. Traditionally, the men’s meet comes a week after the women’s meet, and the men’s NCAA Championship meet comes a week after the women’s meet.

This is because the Missouri Valley Conference, which is also delaying its conference championship meets until April, will hold its women’s championship meet from April 15-17. Because some of the Missouri Valley schools have men’s swim teams that participate in the MAC, the women’s meet was scheduled for the same weekend as the MVC women’s meet, so that the MAC men’s meet and MVC women’s meet wouldn’t be the same weekend.

The Missouri Valley doesn’t sponsor men’s swimming, so the MAC could schedule the men’s MAC meet as they wished without worry of conflicts, and they opted to go earlier, rather than later.

By having the meets in early April, swimming & diving will miss conflicts with fall sports championships, which will be later in April, and keeps the meets further from finals. The hope is that this later scheduling will allow more people in the building and a better ‘championship experience.’

Of the two genders, the MAC women, specifically Akron, has more recently qualified swimmers for the NCAA Championship meet.

The Zips placed 39th at the 2019 NCAA Championship meet, the last meet held, qualifying multiple individual swimmers and relays. The team didn’t have any qualifiers for the 2020 NCAA championship meet, which was ultimately canceled. This timing would give women’s teams a chance to line out a second taper before the conference championship meet, if there were any NCAA qualifiers.

For some swimmers and teams, this could create conflicts with their national championships and especially Olympic Trials meets, ahead of the rescheduled 2021 Olympic Games. Specifically this creates conflicts with countries like Canada, which will hold their Trials from April 7-11.

The defending women’s conference champions from Akron, for example, have three Canadians on their 2020-2021 roster. All three, Sarah Watson, Maddy Gatrall, and Brooke Lamoureux, are qualified for the Canadian Olympic Trials.

Full Press Release, Courtesy MAC

Wrestling

• Eight-Week Season (Jan. 1 – Feb. 21) with Conference Quad and Tri Meets scheduled by the conference office during Weeks 4 & 5 (Jan. 22-24 & Jan. 29-31).
• Teams may independently schedule additional Conference meets as able or needed.
• Conference Championships moved to February 27-28, 2021(current dates March 5-6).

Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving

• Season beginning November 5, 2020.
• Men’s Conference Championships: April 8-10, 2021 (hosted by Miami).
• Women’s Conference Championships: April 15-17, 2021 (hosted by Eastern Michigan).