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2026 Summer Nationals event cap

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I’m curious how others feel about the event caps at Summer Nationals this year.

I understand the need to keep the meet timeline manageable. My concern isn’t that events were capped—it’s that there didn’t seem to be any advance information about which events were likely to fill or how the capacities would be managed.

I was surprised to find that all of the events over 100 meters were already closed while shorter events remained open. Without knowing that ahead of time, it felt like registration became a race to click “submit” rather than an opportunity to register for the events you’ve trained all season to swim.

In my opinion, USMS should have published estimated event capacities or identified events that were likely to fill quickly before registration opened. I think having that information would allow swimmers to make more informed decisions and would make the registration process feel more transparent.

I’m interested to hear what others think and whether anyone else was caught off guard by the event caps.

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  • in reply to Jennifer Tran

    Perhaps I don't understand what you're trying to do. Are you suggesting that because someone is faster, they get priority registration? I think USMS goes for the "fitness, I'm ok, you're ok, we're having fun" thing.  It's a non-starter.  Also, generally USMS does not take advice from the forums riff-raff but keep tilting at windmills Slight smile

  • in reply to Kurt Dickson

    Agree. This sounds wildly discriminatory against the older age groups, and mildly sexist as well. I don't have a solution, but this one simply selects young, fast, men. 

  • in reply to Kurt Dickson

    One idea is to give "points" to swimmers who actively compete in the events AND their equivalents, and to the fastest times within their age group (perhaps relative to the National Record).

    I'm a swimmer without any NQTs, so I'm thinking out loud about a pathway for swimmers, especially those without NQTs, to still be able to swim.

  • in reply to Jennifer Tran

    I get why this seems like it’s inclusive, but requiring a previous swim unfairly disadvantages people who don’t have many local meet options. Nationals was already heavily represented by Pacific Masters (since it was local), this probably would have been even more heavily skewed if swimming the event was required, as we have so many meet opportunities if you live in the Bay Area and the part of the state west of the Bay Area. Nationals was my fifth meet of the year, and I never had to travel more than 90 minutes. I can off the top of my head think of at least four meets in that same distance that I didn’t go to. Some people have to travel further than that for the closest meet. It doesn’t surprise me, if they have to travel for meets, that some people would choose Nationals as their one event of the year.

  • in reply to 166DW

    Thank you for this point! I am lucky that I'm based in Seattle, and 6-7 meets are offered each year within 1 to 1.5 hours of me, while my friends in the Niagara LMSC (where I'm from) frequently have to travel more than two hours for a maximum of 2-3 meets a year.