USA Swimming has announced the dates, locations, and time standards for the inaugural “Futures Championships.”
The meets will be held from July 30th-August 2nd, the same weekend as Junior Nationals, in:
- Greensboro, North Carolina (Greensboro Aquatic Center)
- Mt. Hood, Oregon (Mt. Hood Aquatic Center)
- West Lafayette, Indiana (Purdue University)
The meets are designed to bridge the gap between Sectionals meets and Junior Nationals: a gap that has grown in recent years as junior-level swimmers have become faster-and-faster, therefore necessitating faster-and-faster time standards to keep a reasonable number of participants.
While the meet is designed for swimmers to make the leap to Junior Nationals, the Future Championships are technically an open-age meet not limited to 18 & unders.
Swimmers with a time standard that would qualify them for the U.S. National Championships (senior, not junior, summer, not winter) are not eligible for the Futures Championships.
Teams are assigned to each of the three sites based on Geography. While this does reduce the distance traveled for many participants, all three hosting sites are at an extreme of their respective boundaries. For example, swimmers from Texas’ Gulf Coast region (Houston area) will travel roughly 1850 miles “as the crow flies” to Mt. Hood, Oregon. That’s balanced out by the significantly shorter trip to Junior Nationals, meaning that most swimmers with Junior Nationals standards will expect to attend that meet instead.
See the full boundary map below:
Boundaries for Futures Championships. Courtesy: USA Swimming
USA Swimming has also announced the Time Standards for the meet, though not as recently. Those can be seen here, or in full below.
Note: the time standards that were originally linked in USA Swimming’s meet page are incorrect. The correct standards are below.
where are the bonus times??
where are meet results…have looked everywhere even meet mobile
susan – search “Futures” on Meet Mobile. All three are up now.
Where are the results on futures championships being posted? Is there a link or website. Thanks
Where are daily results being posted on the Futures Meet at Purdue and please do not say meet mobile, they are awful!! Many thanks Sharon
Braden,
Have read the meet announcement three times, can’t find anywhere that there area no faster than cuts that keeps the kids out with summer national cuts. Can you tell me where to look for that bit of info.
Hi Sarah,
I’ve seen it several places, but here’s one example:
http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&itemid=7548&mid=14491
“Athletes with a Phillips 66 Nationals qualifying cut may not participate in the Futures Championships.”
Phillips 66 Nationals are the official name of Summer Nationals.
Thanks for letting me know.
Bad news for my kid since she might barely have the cut in one event and therefore gets no championship meet this summer. There has to be tons of kids like her who are going to slip through the cracks. Great. Not.
I believe the locations were selected not just on pure geography, but on LSC enrollment, in an effort to keep all three meets roughly the same size. The long-term intent is to switch the locations to keep the meet fresh. So if you don’t like your location this year, it most likely will change in upcoming years. The meet is open to all ages to capture all swimmers based on performance level versus age. Intended to work WITH Zone Champs as a stepping stone to Nationals: Progression is LSC champs, Sectionals, Zone Champs, Futures, Nationals. Cuts developed as a percentage below National meets, as are Sectional standards.
Really stinks for the people that thougt they had qualified and were excited, only to realize that USA swimming changed the time standards on them.
NDSWIM – as it turns out, the slower standards are the correct ones afterall.
I also think this is a great idea. My 14-year-old daughter is several seconds away from Summer Juniors and if she doesn’t make any cuts at the sectional meet in March, we would definitely consider attending this meet.