When I was registering for spring nationals, I didn't have any recent short course times to draw from, so I used my summer long course national times and the USA Swimming conversion tool for my entries. I was really surprised to see that times that were in the top ten at Mission Viejo, even a fourth place in the 1500, barely made the qualifying time for Santa Clara. Another time that was top 10 last summer didn't even make the NQT for spring. I've never done spring nats......is it a much faster meet? It seems like it's a much smaller meet, so how can I place well in a bigger meet and not even qualify for the smaller? Maybe it's the conversion tool, but every other time I used it, it was spot on.
I don't mean to sound whiny, I can still go swim Santa Clara so all is good. However I am intensely curious.
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Kirk is correct. Historically SC Nationals is much larger than LC Nationals (~1700 swimmers for SC vs ~1000 for LC). While NQTs are based on a three year rolling average of Top Ten times, typically Nationals has a huge impact on Top Ten because the bigger meets usually mean more competitive times that get submitted for Top Ten. Therefore SC usually has quicker NQTs because attendance is higher at those meets.
Very recent history shows a huge upward tick in attendance at LC Nationals, though. 2012 (Omaha, 1257 swimmers) was the second largest LC meet at the time and now 2013 (MV, 1393) is the largest. Of note, 2000 (Baltimore, 1380 swimmers) was the previous biggest LC Nationals. However, 2011 (Auburn, 688) was one of the smallest LC Nationals in the past 20 years. This year the NQTs for Maryland will include those two large meets, which likely means the NQTs are quicker for most events. And next year when Auburn drops out and is replaced with Maryland, I have a feeling we will have three very large LC National meets in a row. Again, the size of the meet doesn't necessarily mean times will be faster but it usually is the case.
FWIW, here is a FAQ about NQTs:
www.usms.org/.../NQT-FAQ.pdf
Jeff Roddin
USMS Championship Committee
Kirk is correct. Historically SC Nationals is much larger than LC Nationals (~1700 swimmers for SC vs ~1000 for LC). While NQTs are based on a three year rolling average of Top Ten times, typically Nationals has a huge impact on Top Ten because the bigger meets usually mean more competitive times that get submitted for Top Ten. Therefore SC usually has quicker NQTs because attendance is higher at those meets.
Very recent history shows a huge upward tick in attendance at LC Nationals, though. 2012 (Omaha, 1257 swimmers) was the second largest LC meet at the time and now 2013 (MV, 1393) is the largest. Of note, 2000 (Baltimore, 1380 swimmers) was the previous biggest LC Nationals. However, 2011 (Auburn, 688) was one of the smallest LC Nationals in the past 20 years. This year the NQTs for Maryland will include those two large meets, which likely means the NQTs are quicker for most events. And next year when Auburn drops out and is replaced with Maryland, I have a feeling we will have three very large LC National meets in a row. Again, the size of the meet doesn't necessarily mean times will be faster but it usually is the case.
FWIW, here is a FAQ about NQTs:
www.usms.org/.../NQT-FAQ.pdf
Jeff Roddin
USMS Championship Committee
