It's time for the NCAA to switch to LCM; a Manifesto
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.
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?
Not many. I think NCAA swimming is great for swimmers.
Jeff> How many swimmers have long term careers in swimming?!?
Ande> Not many.
Surely there must be some statistics somewhere? Might USAS be able to query a database of its membership and cough something up?
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?
Point taken, but if there was more long course swimming in college one could speculate that younger swimmers might be more competitive. If you don't really start focusing on long course until you leave school (Missy Franklin and Michael Phelps being obvious exceptions), perhaps it takes awhile to rework your stroke.
S
Two notes:
1. I definitely agree that the rise of the professional swimmer is the primary reason for the lack of college (male) athletes making the Olympic team. I noted that LCM was only one of many factors, it's certainly not the only one.
2. Note that I said every major swimming program had an LCM facility. Not every NCAA program. Big difference.
Now that I'm through being defensive, here's any interesting article by Jonty Skinner on this very topic:
Here.
His conclusions:
1. SCY and LCM events of the same distance category are remarkably different in terms of conditioning requirements and resulting training strategy requirements. 200 SCY free is a very different event than 200 LCM free. He talks about both event duration and stroke pace degradation as they relate to SCY and LCM. He concludes that by focusing on training for SCY, we're doing our best athletes a disservice on the world stage.
2. Across the board, many NCAA finalists perform poorly at LCM meets (notably US Nationals). He argues this is partially a result of SCY-focused training.
3. He states that the majority of the best swimmers and coaches in the 60s and 70s were from club programs that heavily focused on LCM. The center of swimming power has now shifted to the NCAA system and SCY. As a result, he notes that SCY performance has continued to improve dramatically over time while the pace of LCM performance improvement has stagnated.
Long story short, he agrees with me: SCY is the devil and must be stopped. Stopped I say!
Do other countries utilize SCM as we do SCY? Or do some have a strict diet of LCM?
Based on the FINA Masters SCM TT it seems to be a very popular format.
Skinner’s report is from a decade ago, not based on current swimming paradigms.
I am surprised that no one has challenged Jonty's assertions in the final section, "Issues involving a talent driven environment," where he seems almost to wax nostalgic for the mega-yardage training of yore.
Do other countries utilize SCM as we do SCY? Or do some have a strict diet of LCM?
My information is dated and only a single data point, but when I was an age-grouper living in Greece my team hardly ever trained or competed SCM. But this was way back in 1977-80, and I get the feeling that SCM has become more popular since then.
I know some coaches that caution against LCM-only training, thinking that mixing some short-course training is good because you can achieve higher speeds. I don't think it is impossible to train for LCM exclusively in a short course pool; indeed, Jonty seems to say as much when he talks about the need for more endurance/aerobic training. He seems to lament the SCY focus of college mostly because of how it has purportedly affected training.
My information is dated and only a single data point, but when I was an age-grouper living in Greece my team hardly ever trained or competed SCM. But this was way back in 1977-80, and I get the feeling that SCM has become more popular since then.FINA didn’t officially recognize SCM (at least for records) until 1991, so there was very little incentive for world class SCM meets back in the late 70’s.
