2010 SCY Nationals

It's official, Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA) will host 2010 SCY Nationals.

That is awesome news! and a group of 4 of us that swim together in Atlanta are going to go for it!! I have looked into some local swim meets for qualifying. Does anyone know what requirements there are to having a valid qualifying time? Do meets have to be USMS sanctioned? What if I swim in a USASwimming meet that has an "open" category? What about a local developmental meet? Do I have to be a USMS member when I obtain the time or can I register later? How long is a time good for (i.e. when can I obtain a national time for 2010?)? Also, I'm looking at the National Qualifying Times for 2009 (last updated 9/29/08). WIll them times change for 2010? Are the new times available? What's the best place to go to keep up with info on the 2010 nationals in terms of dates, event listing, deadlines, etc.? Thanks! Rich Remember, you get to swim any three events at Nationals because you are a registered USMS member. You can swim up to three bonus events by meeting the associated NQT. While I am not on the Championship Committee (CC), I do beleive that if you have met the NQT of an event in any official competition (and converting times from different courses would be OK too) that is perfectly acceptable. Again, not an official answer but I'm pretty sure you would need to be a registered USMS member when your swims occurred, just to be safe. I do not believe that there is any validation of NQTs with regards to entries. I'm pretty sure it's on the honor system. Then again, if the NQT for 200 Free say is 2:00.00 and you enter at 1:59.00 and swim a 2:30.00 you might get some strange looks. Info on 2010 Nats will be listed under Nationals in the Competion section of the USMS home page. I would imagine that more solid info would start to appear late this year for SCY and early next for LCM. NQTs are calculated using the average of last three years TOP 10 10th place time for each age group event. The CC then takes that time and adds a certain percentage. Last year (08) it was +10% for all events, for 2009 they added +15% for 50-100 distances and +10% for distances of 200 and up. So until this year's Top 10 in each distance is calculated, the NQTs for 2010 can not yet be determined plus the CC needs to determine the adjustment for next year. I think NQTs have had to been achieved in the last 2 years prior to the first day of the Nationals event.

That is awesome news! and a group of 4 of us that swim together in Atlanta are going to go for it!! I have looked into some local swim meets for qualifying. Does anyone know what requirements there are to having a valid qualifying time? Do meets have to be USMS sanctioned? What if I swim in a USASwimming meet that has an "open" category? What about a local developmental meet? Do I have to be a USMS member when I obtain the time or can I register later? How long is a time good for (i.e. when can I obtain a national time for 2010?)? Also, I'm looking at the National Qualifying Times for 2009 (last updated 9/29/08). WIll them times change for 2010? Are the new times available? What's the best place to go to keep up with info on the 2010 nationals in terms of dates, event listing, deadlines, etc.? Thanks! Rich

Are the dates of the meet known yet? Thanks Jim (see below)

I have looked into some local swim meets for qualifying. Does anyone know what requirements there are to having a valid qualifying time? Do meets have to be USMS sanctioned? What if I swim in a USASwimming meet that has an "open" category? What about a local developmental meet? Do I have to be a USMS member when I obtain the time or can I register later? How long is a time good for (i.e. when can I obtain a national time for 2010?)? This post will probably answer your questions: Qualifying for Nationals - U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums

I just looked at the qualifying times for short course yard nationals for 2010. Fast! www.usms.org/.../nqt.pdf Especially for 55-59 women. All the times are faster than last year's, just looking cursorily at events I *might* have qualified for. I am concluding that these faster times have been influenced by the tech suits. Yes, the suits have been around for more than just one year, but I think they get these times by averaging times over 3 years and add a percentage. I think in the last 3 years tech suit use has become the norm at meets, whereas, possibly, 4 years ago and earlier, fewer people were wearing them. For instance, compare qualifying times, 2009, for the 55-59 women, for these events: 50 free (:34.19); 100 free (1:16.37); 500 free (7:11.54); 1000 free (15:00.19), 100 IM (1:28.52); 400 IM (6:57.65), to this year's qualifying times for same events, same age groups: 50 free (:33.24); 100 free (1:14.84); 500 free (7:05.66); 1000 free (14:44.90); 100 IM (1:26.28); and 400 IM (6:49.45). I might have qualified had everyone stayed somewhat near the speeds that represented the average for last year, but these times, for me, will be a stretch. I wonder (and guess that) if Masters bans the tech suits, the qualifying times will go down (be slower) in few years. I recognize also that these much faster times (to my swimmer's body/ability) show that more people are coming back to racing in masters, and that many of these people have been swimming since they were young, or swam in college, and took a break but once back in the water, they still have the muscle memory that I never got, since I took up competitive swimming only when I joined masters at age 40. Not that I'm not determined to qualify for every single event I listed above by working my butt off. And probably for most elite nationals swimmers these times seem slow. But it's interesting to me how much faster they are than last year's.

Does anybody know what facilities will be available in Atlanta for warm-up/warm-down? It looks like there is a third 25 yd pool and a diving well. Will these be available during the meet?

Does anybody know what facilities will be available in Atlanta for warm-up/warm-down? It looks like there is a third 25 yd pool and a diving well. Will these be available during the meet? The diving well will be used for warm-up/warm-down but the other 25 yd pool will not be available unless you are affiliated with Georgia Tech.

The diving well will be used for warm-up/warm-down but the other 25 yd pool will not be available unless you are affiliated with Georgia Tech.Is there a quick way to get affiliated? Take some online course and quickly become a student? :)

The diving well will be used for warm-up/warm-down but the other 25 yd pool will not be available unless you are affiliated with Georgia Tech. I was afraid of that. There were 1800 people at Austin and the diving well was not nearly big enough too handle all of the people. Thanks for the info.