SwimMAC Carolina Wins 3rd-Straight Club Excellence Title

SwimMAC Carolina has run away with their third-straight Club Excellence title, the program that awards gold, silver, and bronze medal rankings, and grants, to the top 18 & under clubs in the country.

This year’s title by an uncommonly-deep SwimMAC club was by 12,000 points ahead of NCAP, with SwimAtlanta 3rd in 37,294 and Dynamo 4th in 33,292.

This is the third-straight year that SwimMAC has walked away with the crown, but equally as exciting as that three-peat is that two new clubs have made the top 20 that earned “gold medal status”: the Scottsdale Aquatic Club and  the Wilton Y Wahoos.

The gold medal clubs, which are the 20 highest-ranked clubs based on 18 & under athletes eligible to represent the United States in international competition.

In addition,to achieve a gold standard, the club has to have a swimmer who, in long course, achieved the gold standard for the year before – which is equivalent to the 150th ranked swimmer in the world from the prior year for women, or 200th ranked swimmer in the world from the prior year for men. See those standards here.

Also making a big move up this year is SwimAtlanta. Last year, they were a silver medal club, but it wasn’t for lack of power points. They didn’t have a swimmer hit the gold medal time standard last year, though they were the third-highest scoring club.

$350,000 are distributed to the top 100 clubs, achieving gold or silver medal status, which comes out to $3,500 per club on average. The rankings are not scaled for membership size, which means that clubs are more-and-more being given financial incentive to merge into massive multi-club sites.

See the rankings of the gold medal clubs below, and a full listing of all teams honored as part of the 2014 club excellence program here.