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It's time for the NCAA to switch to LCM; a Manifesto

Former Member
Former Member
I believe that the US team has been hurt by the NCAA continuing to stick with the SCY format. I believe that the fact that fewer and fewer college athletes are making the team is partially because college athletes are trained to race SCY (of course there are several other reasons for the shift as well). Here's a summary of why I think sticking with SCY is silly: 1. LCM requires specific training and experience to race optimally. Starts and turns are somewhat deemphasized, pacing and rhythm are made even more important. You often see relatively inexperienced US swimmers crushing walls but then losing time between the flags (Tom Shields springs to mind). I believe this is partially a result of focusing on short course. Most NCAA teams train long course on occasion, but it needs to be the focus. 2. I believe that part of the reluctance to go LCM is that the NCAA feels it may discriminate against programs without their own LCM facility. This shouldn't be a concern any more. At this point every major DI program has an LCM facility (or several LCM facilities). Many (the majority?) of quality DII and DIII programs have LCM facilities. The NCAA should stop worrying about upsetting a minority of members, bite the bullet and say they're going LCM. 3. SCY is the Galapagos of swimming formats: it was developed in a vacuum and exists only in the US. LCM is the world standard. SCY to LCM time conversions are very suspect. The excitement of NCAA championships would be much enhanced if the times were comparable to other times around the world. This would improve the prestige of the conference and the meet and improve the centrality of the NCAA in the world swimming landscape. It would also remove one of the (smaller) concerns that foreign talent may have for training in the US. IMO, the US needs to swim and train with the best at all times to ensure it stays competitive. Moving to LCM will enhance their ability to do so. All of these points are debatable. I'd be interested to see what other people think.
  • It seems like some of the USA's weakest events are the 50 and 100 free for both men and women, which runs counter to the OP's suggestion that SCY should make us faster in the sprints. The 50 stands to reason (to my feeble brain at least), since there are no turns. You need to hold your stroke together at an extremely high intensity and for a longer time than if you were swimming short course, right? In short course 50s I suspect there is also the required skill not only of nailing your turns but of cleanly getting through the turbulence off the wall. A long course 50 would seem to be contested entirely in clear water. S
  • The 50 stands to reason (to my feeble brain at least), since there are no turns. You need to hold your stroke together at an extremely high intensity and for a longer time than if you were swimming short course, right? In short course 50s I suspect there is also the required skill not only of nailing your turns but of cleanly getting through the turbulence off the wall. A long course 50 would seem to be contested entirely in clear water. S But with the exception of Missy Franklin (high school) in the 100 free, aren't our 50 and 100 freestyle sprinters all post NCAA/college pros? That shouldn't be holding them back now. And don't most other countries spend some time training and competing in short course meters? Perhaps other countries just focus more on sprinting than we do?
  • But with the exception of Missy Franklin (high school) in the 100 free, aren't our 50 and 100 freestyle sprinters all post NCAA/college pros? Don't forget Lia Neal on the 400 free relay.
  • Former Member
    Former Member
    It looks like we win about 30% of Olympic swimming medals. In the men's 400 and 1500 frees, recently we haven't hit that (25% and 16.7%). The women hold to the normal medal-winning %. Something's causing our guys to fall off in distance freestyle. It appears to be technical efficiency. Or maybe our guys just like to sprint more. My other point wasn't that stroke technique isn't important in short course, or that underwaters aren't important in long course. Of course they are. The point is that short course is better practice for things like turns and underwaters, since you can do them more often. And that long course is better practice for developing stroke technique, as you groove the stroke more times in a row before hitting a turn. Stroke efficiency is rewarded more in long course, and I believe the future of elite swimming is moving steadily toward less strokes per length. 400IM's not an issue for USA. Not until the next changing of the guard anyway.
  • While we are talking changes in NCAA swimming, I’d love to see an NCAA Open Water championship!:worms:
  • A friend of mine thinks NCAA swimming is the downfall of USA Swimming on an international level. He argues NCAA swimming limits many USA swimmers ability to compete on an international level because the NCAA meet scoring system places a higher emphasis on short course sprinting than middle distance or distance swimming. His arguement is coaches train swimmers for 50's & 100's to win points instead of training them for 100's, 200's & 400's which he believes would be better for their long term careers and for USA on an international level. I underlined a comment made above. How many swimmers have long term careers in swimming?!?! Are we talking about changing the NCAA mindset to accommodate a dozen professional swimmers in spite of thousands of NCAA swimmers who swim for the pure enjoyment of racing for their college for four years?
  • I underlined a comment made above. How many swimmers have long term careers in swimming?!?! Are we talking about changing the NCAA mindset to accommodate a dozen professional swimmers in spite of thousands of NCAA swimmers who swim for the pure enjoyment of racing for their college for four years? Exactly. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how many NCAA Div I, II, and III colleges have LCM facilities (my guess is that it is subatantially less than 50%) and then to figure out what the cost would be to provide these facilities and how many male and female swimmers might lose the opportunity to swim in college if the colleges are unable to provide new LCM pools. I'm sure the NCAA has those figures at their finger tips. Further, it makes no sense to swim a whole college season of practices and dual meets scy, and then swim the NCAA championships LCM, even if it is an olympic year. NCAA swimmers contending for an olympic spot will have access and will be training in LCM pools (if their goal is an olympic trial, they aren't going to go to a college that doesn't have access to LCM). I didn't notice any problems with underwaters and walls at the OT and it doesn't seem to me like swimming SCY for NCAA championships would be a problem. Yes, it might give some of the NCAA contenders that aren't focused on the olympic trials and aren't swimming LCM a bit of an edge at the NCAAs, but it works the other way at OT, and overall spreads out the potential winners from both events. More contenders and winners is better, i think. It also didn't seem like there were that many NCAA swimmers in the semi-finals and finals at OTs - most seemed either HS or post NCAA age elite pros. As others have stated, i like the scy or scm format. There are far more swimmers, like me, who didn't contend for either NCAA champiponships or OT and whose "swimming career" will hopefullly span a lifetime - from AG, through college, and masters. It would be shameful to damage these swimmers' opportunities to swim in college (by requiring LCM pools) in order to resolve the relatively minor difficulty that a few elite NCAA swimmers have already figured out. If anything, shift the NCAA season to begin earlier in the fall and end sooner in the spring in olympic years. :2cents:
  • While we are talking changes in NCAA swimming, I’d love to see an NCAA Open Water championship!:worms: I agree. A 5K, OW, NCAA Championship seems logical. Conference Championships could be held in late September in most of the country w/ a NC in November or December in Florida. I don't think it would be prohibitively expensive since the athletes and coaches are already in place and if the NCAA would allow a couple extra scholarships for OW swimmers it would be a boost to the sport. It makes sense it is an Olympic sport but the NCAA is never going to make it happen.
  • I like the 5y distance just fine thank you. :D I always get to a meter pool and if I'm in backstroke, or an IM event it almost an OOPS as I'm entering the turn. I almost have to remember to take an extra stroke, and just look out for the wall at that point. I have no preference between 5y or 5m, I would just like a single distance for all pools (like the 15m rule for underwaters, which holds in SCY as well). Back to our regularly scheduled topic... Long and short course bring out different skills. I think having collegians compete in both would probably be best. SC hones turns, underwaters and sprints. LC is better for developing stroke technique, especially over distance. Good confidence builder too. We're not as strong above the 200s as we are below. That might be attributable to so much time in SC. I'm afraid we might get schooled a bit in London by low-stroke-count efficiency freaks like Sun Yang and Park Tae Hwan. Their technique is a peek into the future, and I'm sure they didn't learn it doing SC. So there are 3 events over 200 yards, and here is how we've done in the past four Olympics: 400 free men: 3 medals (all bronze) out of 12 possible 1500 free men: 2 medals (silver, bronze) 400 IM men: 8 medals (4 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze) 400 free women: 4 medals (gold, 2 silver, bronze) 800 free women: 4 medals (2 gold, 2 bronze) 400 IM women: 3 medals (2 silver, 1 bronze) I'm not going to do the work to figure out if this is statistically worse than our performance in other events, though I'll go out on a limb and assert that we're not doing too badly in the men's 400 IM (and likely to go 1-2 in London). More generally, I'm not sure I completely buy the assertion that good technique is not all that important in short course competition (SCY or SCM). Good underwaters can be pretty significant in LCM competition too, potentially up to 30% of the race distance. Watch some videos of Lochte last summer in World Championships, or the following from 2007. Phelps Smashes 200-free World Record - YouTube In terms of collegiate swimming, perhaps more significant than swimming short course was the introduction of 200-yd relays.
  • By what measure? In the history of Olympic swimming the US has won 489 total medals. Australia is second with 168. The US has won 214 gold medals out of the 489 total awarded. In 2008 the US won 12 golds and Australia was second with 6. The US won 31 of the 104 medals awarded and the percentage would probably be higher if three swimmers per nation were allowed in the individual events. Is there another sport where any single country has been as dominant at the Olympics? I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of his argument with what I wrote: A friend of mine thinks NCAA swimming is the downfall of USA Swimming on an international level. He argues NCAA swimming limits many USA swimmers ability to compete on an international level because the NCAA meet scoring system places a higher emphasis on short course sprinting than middle distance or distance swimming. His arguement is coaches train swimmers for 50's & 100's to win points instead of training them for 100's, 200's & 400's which he believes would be better for their long term careers and for USA on an international level. I'm not worried about NCAA swimming from that POV. What's more concerning to me are: + schools dropping their swimming programs, + Div 1 Men swimming teams only have have 9.9 scholarships & women have 14, I'd like each to have more, NCAA-Allowed Scholarship Allotment + how many scholarships are given to foreign swimmers, + the NCAA meet selection process, I'd prefer makeable cuts, rather than limiting the men meet to 270 swimmers & 320 for women and + that squads at NCAA championships are limited to: 18 swimmers or 17 swimmers & 2 divers. (divers count half) or 16 swimmers & 3 or 4 divers . . .