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

Thanks for the discussion on Nationals.

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 2025-26 and four times in 2024-25. Even though I didn’t have an NQT, I think that 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.

Thanks for the discussion on Nationals.

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 2025-26 and four times in 2024-25. Even though I didn’t have an NQT, I think that 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.