Simon Fraser Locked Out of NCAAs Due To Not Competing In Enough Sanctioned Meets

Six swimmers from the Simon Fraser University swimming & diving team will not be competing at this year’s NCAA Division II Championships despite swimming fast enough to do so.

The team failed to reach the minimum number of sanctioned intercollegiate competitions, one of the NCAA requirements, and therefore will have its swimmers sit on the sidelines one year after a historic performance at the 2022 championships.

The team’s coaching staff was unaware of the issue until it was too late—they were notified less than 48 hours before the list of NCAA D2 qualifiers was released—as the rule about what constitutes a sanctioned meet changed from last year, head coach Demone Tissira told SwimSwam Monday.

“Heartbroken. It’s a really upsetting situation,” Tissira said.

NCAA Division II compliance says a team must compete in a minimum of eight intercollegiate competitions with at least 11 participants (per gender).

Last year, Tissira said the program asked the NCAA if a collegiate competition that also involves age group swimmers would still count towards the sanctioned total of meets, and they were told that it would.

“They said there’s no rule that prohibits age groupers from attending college competition, college-hosted meets. So we said, ‘OK, we are safe.’ And then this year they said, “no you can’t.’ So we don’t know why they shifted their interpretation from this year to last year. We understand if it’s the rule it’s the rule, but not why last year it was OK and not this year.”

Tissira said the team was officially credited with having competed in seven intercollegiate competitions, one below the minimum, despite having actually raced in “11 or 12” meets over 16 days of competition.

He said the NCAA said that once a competition has age groupers in it, it becomes a USA Swimming competition, rather than a collegiate meet.

“Since when?” Tissira said. “Last year we asked if there is any issue, and you said no.”

This only further complicates things as Simon Fraser is a Canadian university—the only one in the NCAA—which isn’t a part of USA Swimming.

The Odlum Brown Colleges Cup in November, which featured a group of all-star club swimmers along with several Canadian universities, was the competition at the root of the issue.

When questioning why this interpretation changed, Tissira said the NCAA let certain things go due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, but wasn’t going to be lenient this year. The minimum meet requirement was also only six meets last year.

“They said, ‘last year with COVID we were soft, but now we cannot let anything slide’,” Tissira said. “But you told who you were soft? The rule is the rule. Why do you have the power to say yes and no? The rule is the rule. Just tell us, this is the rule.

“We learned the hard way. I get it. I take 100 percent responsibility, it is mine. But we need to understand why you have the ability to change the interpretation.”

SFU Senior Director of Athletics and Reaction, Theresa Hanson, provided the following statement on the matter:

SFU Athletics learned last week that SFU Swimming program did not meet selection criteria for the NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championships.

The athletics team is deeply saddened by this news, and we are supporting the six student-athletes who are impacted. A misinterpretation of what qualifies as a NCAA competition resulted in SFU being one competition short for championship selection. An annual local swim meet that the team has regularly competed in, does not meet the current criteria for a qualifying NCAA competition in its current format.

SFU Athletics & Recreation sincerely apologizes for this error and the impact it has on these students. We will be reviewing our competition verification process and making improvements to ensure this type of error never happens again.

The university is extremely proud of our swimmers’ accomplishments this season and applaud their hard work and dedication.

Quincy University, a first-year program, also failed to meet the qualification standard due to its roster being too small.

• See the full competition minimum requirements here.
• See the 2023 NCAA Division II Women’s and Men’s Championship Qualifiers here.

Tissira also mentioned the team’s early-season trip to the University of Pacific, where the Redleafs raced against the host Tigers and the University of Nevada over two days. One day was raced as an invitational, and one day was raced as a dual meet, but SFU listed it as a two-day invite on their schedule and only had it count as one meet. Nevada, on the other hand, listed the meets separately.

“They counted it as one contest, not two. If you go to the Pacific or Nevada team websites, they count it as two. But they didn’t let us count it as two.

“We made sure that we did everything,” he said. “And once we found out, and (the NCAA) had released their list, we knew we couldn’t win an appeal.”

Tissira also mentioned that there was an issue with counting the Husky Invitational towards their official meet count, as it was not hosted by a university.

Last season, the SFU women finished eighth in the team race, the highest in program history, while the men had just their second individual championship victory come as they placed 14th overall.

The female swimmers in position to qualify for NCAAs were Jordan Doner (100 breast), Isabelle Roth (100/200 breast), Kaysha Bikadi (200 back), Tori Meklensek (500/1650 free) and Abigail Williams (100 free, 100 back), along with four of the five relays. On the men’s side, Matthew Fuller was in position to qualify in the 200 freestyle.

Among those six swimmers, only Meklensek and Roth competed individually at last year’s championships, while Bikadi, Doner and Fuller were relay-only swimmers.

Tissira broke the news to the entire team prior to the announcement of the NCAA qualifiers last Wednesday.

“We explained to them the reason, we gave them the details of every single thing, as a team. Not only the six who had qualified. The whole team was in the room.

“We asked them to be together and to start their next season’s goals right now,” he said, noting that the whole team attended practice the next morning. “They are sad, but they support each other. It’s the type of situation where you’ll see how strong your team is.”

Four of SFU’s meets during the 2022-23 season included them competing against Canadian U SPORTS teams rather than those in the NCAA. With the clampdown this year, Tissira now wonders if SFU will be able to race Canadian universities at all moving forward, as those meets are not sanctioned by USA Swimming.

He acknowledged that being a Canadian school in the NCAA does make setting a competition schedule somewhat difficult, due to various travel costs.

“Some universities, even if you invite them, can only do bus trips.

“With budgets and restrictions, and some Americans don’t even have a passport.”

The Simon Fraser swimming & diving team has undergone drastic changes over the last year, as numerous swimmers departed the program in the 2022 offseason to join former SFU coach Liam Donnelly, who started up a pro group at Simon Fraser Aquatics. A total of 16 of 26 swimmers who were either freshmen, sophomores or juniors during the 2021-22 season did not return in 2022-23.

Among those was the 2022 NCAA Division II champion in the men’s 400 IM, Collyn Gagne, and 2022 All-American Kennedy Loewen, who both opted to end their collegiate careers early to join the pro group under Donnelly.

Tissira was officially named the SFU head coach in June 2021, taking over from Donnelly, who had been the team’s coach dating back to 1992.