USMS National Pool Championship Endurance Event Caps and Seeding - suggestions for improvement

Thanks for the discussion on Nationals Championship Event Caps.

One of my biggest frustrations with Nationals registration was the lack of visibility into the waitlist. A modernized system could show registered entries, waitlist entries, and your waitlist position, while letting swimmers swap or scratch events themselves. I had to go back and forth with USMS by email and Google Forms just to change one event, without knowing whether I had any realistic chance of getting off a waitlist. I imagine managing hundreds of similar requests also creates a lot of work for USMS staff.

Before Nationals, Yawei Hao and I from Pacific Northwest LMSC also created these Psych/Heat sheets for Summer Nationals, which compare each swimmer’s seed time with their overall personal best and age-group personal best. We found that swimmers enjoyed understanding their competition, and this data could also help identify inaccurate seed times and place swimmers in the correct heats and lanes. This also shows we can capture each swimmer's personal-best time (age-group PB is probably most realistic) in the event and potentially prioritize those with the fastest actual times, not just self-reported seed times.

I’ve also heard the idea of limiting Nationals to swimmers with NQTs, but I’m skeptical of shutting out swimmers without them. I learned to swim as an adult three years ago and still don’t have an NQT. Attending my first Nationals in Indianapolis in 2024 inspired me to formally train with a Masters team and helped me progress beyond our local Adult Learn to Swim program. I hope more ALS swimmers can have that experience.

I analyzed the seed times from 2026 Summer Nationals to see how much removing non-NQT swims would actually affect the meet:

• 1,012 of 4,918 swims (20.6%) did not have an NQT seed time.
• 252 of 1,409 swimmers entered only events without NQT times, including 15 swimmers aged 85+ with no NQTs.
• Another 232 swimmers entered a mix of NQT and non-NQT events.
• Removing all non-NQT swims except 85+ and reorganizing the heats would have saved about 4 hours and 56 minutes.
• Keeping everyone and reorganizing and reseeding by time would have saved about 2 hours and 29 minutes.

This doesn’t account for swimmers on the waitlists who would have filled open spots, so it would be interesting to see the waitlist data. Have you had any luck getting that from USMS?

Rather than shutting out swimmers without NQTs, I think there are at least two alternatives worth discussing.

1) Faster NQTs. We developed percentile-based times that rank swimmers based on USMS Event Rankings from the previous full season, such as AAAA representing roughly the top 2% of swimmers. You can see the NQTs are slower than many Top 55% times. Of course, USMS swimmers who attend meets are generally just faster, so these numbers are skewed.

Could percentile-based tiers like these provide a more consistent basis for NQTs?

2) A qualification pathway that also encourages local meet participation. Perhaps swimmers could accumulate qualification points or simply be required to have raced an event locally within the previous year or two before entering its equivalent at Nationals. For example, I raced the 500 SCY twice in the 2025-26 season and four times in the 2024-25 season. Even though I didn’t have an NQT, I think that my participation should count toward earning a spot to swim the 400 free at Nationals.

I’d be curious what you think about these approaches, particularly whether qualification should be based entirely on speed or also reward participation in Masters meets.

I SUGGEST USMS LEADERSHIP CONSIDER:

1. Defending national champions and at least the top four seeds for each age group for ALL events be allowed access to national championships meets regardless of any event cap process.
2. Defending national champions and at least the top four seeds for each age group for ALL events be seeded in adjacent lanes in the same heat. (If an individual has a seed time significantly faster than anyone else in their age group, they can have the option to be seeded in a heat with similar times.)

 RATIONALE AND MECHANICS

• First, I wholly support
  • USMS vision of inclusion for all swimmers, new or champion, in all events and activities, including the national championships.
  • waving a certain number of events from the National Qualifying Times for new swimmers.
  • need for championship meet time-line rigor so a day ends at a civil hour.
  • The dedication and time commitment of the USMS volunteers, especially under tight deadlines associated with large meets.
• The national championships are presently, however, in effect two meets being run concurrently: A national championship consisting of “sprint” 50 and 100 events each with a championship heat, and a “national swim festival” for “endurance” 200m and longer events consisting of time trials where top-seeded competitors with very close seed times are often split into different heats or across the pool, or recently, excluded from their core events entirely.
• I am aware of the flurry of work at a large meet after ‘positive check-in’. I am confident, however, that there are USMS members with high cognitive coding skills who could effectively devise software that could quickly seed endurance events that are more inclusive and competitive while preserving time discipline.
• When event caps are imposed, endurance swimmers might be locked out entirely while sprint swimmers have a chance to contend for a championship. As commented this is exclusionary to and discriminates against endurance swimmers.
• I am confident the actual number of events that swimmers exempt from caps under this suggestion might enter would be small and would not adversely affect the timeline.
• I realize this endurance seeding issue has come up in the past.  Because of more comprehensive coding capabilities, however, I am suggesting the issue be re-visited.
• One reason swimmers new to competition come to nationals is to view and associate with world class competitors. My suggestions would provide a more balanced meet, with no contender excluded with endurance championship heats for beginning swimmers to watch, and more elite endurance swimmers at the meet to interact with.  I feel this would far outweigh any vibe of elitism in exempting a few top endurance contenders from caps.  New swimmers to nationals may the growth engine for USMS, but the core and lifeblood are the few national contenders who have competed for decades.
• These modifications will make way for way more interesting endurance events, with the announcer able to narrate a championship heat for all events and all age groups. Nationals are long days.  Successful implementation of my suggestions will give the announcer more to talk about during endurance event championship heats, engaging spectators more fully and making for a more engaging day.
• Finally, I am aware USMS leadership has major issues to deal with these days. Tweaking our great national championships to be more inclusive and acknowledge our endurance champion contenders, however, won’t take that much work and will make for better meets.

 PERSONAL STANDING

• 45 year USMS member, occasional top ten postings.
• High school and college national caliber programs in the 1960’s
• Pay dues, workout and compete. Never volunteered in the USMS organization

 I look forward to discussions about these issues and my suggestions on this platform and in the upcoming meetings.

Thank you for giving more thought to the Championship event caps/seeding. 

1. Is there a reason why you chose four top seeds as opposed to a different number?

2. For the top seeds in the event, should seed times be self-reported, or should they be checked with actual meet times? If the latter, what time should the system use? For example, LCM only for Summer Nationals?  SCY only for Spring Nationals? How far back should it consider times? 

I'm curious whether you also re-did any heats from Nationals and whether you gave any time improvements back to the meet, since the most critical issue seems to be event caps instituted to ensure championship meets end at a specific time.

Hi, Jennifer, and thanks for the reply.  Comments:

Why do i think four seeds should have the opportunity to swim together?  While the number is a bit arbitrary, it is the max number that could be combined with the four top seeds from another age group in the same heat for timeline considerations.  There would be actually two races for the championship going on at once, giving the announcer plenty to talk about. This would come into play more in the older, slower age groups with fewer entrants.  Notice that I said, as a qualifier as I hope this is a discussion starter, 'at least four'.  If there are more than four quality seeds capable of winning the age group, I think the coding should be set up to accommodate up to a full championship heat of eight, just like in the 'sprint' events.

Should seed times be self-reported, or actual meet times?  I will leave this to discussion.  I think the majority of opinions over the years have supported actual times. SCY and LCM have conversions, and many commenters have pointed out the lack of meets in some regions.  How far back?  I dunno, two years?

It would be fun to do forensics on the longer events at recent nationals to see if more relational software could shorten the total timeline..  Based on a glance at the mens 1500 at Sacramento, it looks like some time could be saved the way the swimmers got chopped up by starting by filling the fastest heat with eight and leaving the two slowest heats with three and seven swimmers.  But i haven't done anything analytical yet. Of course in that event there were swimmers who whished to swim who were excluded altogether.  I appreciate seeding is a tough call that has been mooted for decades.

My basic purpose is to re-instill a sense of racing to the longer events while preserving the timeline. Thanks again.

I love your recommendations. In the 200 LCM breaststroke I really like to know who I’m swimming against and have them in the heat with me. If I’m swimming when it’s only seeded by time, I have no idea if the people around me are likely to swim their seed times or how they might be pacing when I’m going against my competition. It’s easier to figure out and a lot more fun