Are spring national qualifying times really fast?

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. Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using Tapatalk
Parents
  • Has anyone noticed how much faster you need to be to have a qualifying time this year? Maybe it is just me, but for my age group the 50 free time went from a 33 to a 29 qualifying time. Just when I was getting close, even if I age up the times seem completely out of reach now. Qualifying Times are based strictly on past performance data (as opposed to somebody arbitrarily setting them each year). They are described in detail here: www.usms.org/.../NQT-FAQ.pdf If you can tell us your specific inquiry we can speculate some more (i.e. which course, gender and age group). Jeff
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  • Has anyone noticed how much faster you need to be to have a qualifying time this year? Maybe it is just me, but for my age group the 50 free time went from a 33 to a 29 qualifying time. Just when I was getting close, even if I age up the times seem completely out of reach now. Qualifying Times are based strictly on past performance data (as opposed to somebody arbitrarily setting them each year). They are described in detail here: www.usms.org/.../NQT-FAQ.pdf If you can tell us your specific inquiry we can speculate some more (i.e. which course, gender and age group). Jeff
Children
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