USA Swimming Spring Championships
March 27 - March 31 2007
East Meadow, NY, United States
www.omegatiming.com/.../index.htmwww.memphistigerswimming.com/.../07 Spring Champs Meet Book.pdfwww.nassaucountyny.gov/.../NC_aqua_ctr.html
Long Island’s Eisenhower Park to host 2007 USA Swimming Spring Championships (3/20/2007)
Olympic Medalists, Top Long Island High School Swimmers Mix at Meet March 27-31
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The 2007 USA Swimming Spring Championships will be held March 27-31 at Long Island’s Nassau County Aquatic Center. Heats begin at 9 a.m. each morning with finals starting at 5:30 p.m. The meet, which is officially sanctioned by USA Swimming, the national governing body for the sport, will feature talent including Olympic medalists, national champions and Long Island’s top local talent.
Highlighting the field are an array of Olympic medalists. Carly Piper (Grosse Point, Mich.), a member of the gold-medal-winning 800m free relay that broke the 17-year-old world record at the 2004 Olympic Games, is joined by three-time gold medalist Brooke Bennett (Tampa, Fla.). In addition, Maritza Correia (Valrico, Fla.), a 2004 silver medalist in the 400m freestyle relay, will continue her push for the 2008 Olympic Games in East Meadow. Correia, the first black American woman to qualify for an Olympic swim team, is currently training out of Raleigh, N.C. Correia is joined by 1996 Olympic silver medalist Alison Wagner (San Francisco, Calif.). Wagner won her Olympic medal in the 400m individual medley.
Swimming alongside the Olympic and national champions are 10 Long Island swimmers ranging in age from 14-26 and representing the Long Island Express and Long Island Aquatic Club. The early psyche sheet can be found at usaswimming.org/media. Local contenders include Kevin Wakefield, Yury Zimarev, Dan Demarko, Emily Kelly, Erica Derlath, Julia Festa, Tommy O’Neil, Sean Lane, Jack Wagner and Bobby Smith.
Omegatiming.com will carry live results from the competition. In addition, session summaries and other meet coverage can be found at usaswimming.org Preliminary heats for the women’s 800m freestyle and men’s 1500m free will be contested on Tuesday, March 27 beginning at 4 p.m. For the remainder of the meet, morning sessions will start at 9 a.m., with finals at 5:30 p.m.
Single-session passes are available for both preliminaries ($3 children/students, $5 adults) and finals ($7 children/students, $10 adults). All-session passes may be purchased for $45 and $60. For more information, call 516-572-0509 or email tickets@ncaquaticcenter.com .
Coverage including results, wrap ups, and photo galleries can be found here.
Media wishing to cover the meet should apply for credentials at usaswimming.org/media. Questions regarding meet coverage may be addressed to jrusnak@usaswimming.org.
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About USA Swimming
As the National Governing Body for competitive swimming in the United States, USA Swimming formulates the rules, implements policies and procedures, conducts national championships, disseminates safety and sports medicine information and selects athletes to represent the United States in international competition. USA Swimming has more than 300,000 members nationwide and sanctions more than 7,000 events each year. For more information, visit usaswimming.org.
About Nassau County Aquatic Center
The Aquatic Center at Eisenhower Park is a world-class swimming facility that is part of the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums. It was built in 1998 for the Goodwill Games and has a capacity for 1,800 spectators.
Because of the timing they're not actually calling this "Nationals" anymore... lol... It's a Spring Championships with easier time standards than Nats. All said, I agree it is not great timing at all.
I don't understand the scheduling of this meet. Why would USA Swimming schedule this on the same days as the World Swimming Championships? I understand there are different swimmers at both meets but USA Swimming is promoting the World Championships and wanting people to subscribe to WCSN and there will be major TV coverage everyday on WCSC, FOX, and CBC Canadian TV. I don't know how the local meet host can sell tickets and compete with the World Championships. Every night the meet will have to compete with TV coverage from Australia. The meet is scheduled to start Tuesday and end on Saturday which is exactly the same time the World Swimming Championships end. This does not make sense from a media perspective because all of the attention will be on the World Championships. Plus the public will view this as a very weak National Championships because all of the best USA Swimmers will be in Australia. They could have scheduled this in May and not competed with the major international meet of the year.
We are running a FantaSwim competition for the Spring Championships... maybe we can help bring some more interest to the meet - there certainly are still some great swimmers competing.
Here are three reasons why the timing of spring nationals/championships is not inconvenient:
1) Given that World Champs prelims are in the mid-afternoon and finals are in the middle of the night here in the States, I don't think people will be staying away from nationals to watch it on the Internet.
They can watch prelims in NY, go home/to the hotel and watch Worlds' prelims and then watch nationals/championships finals in NY. If they can, they can stay up and watch worlds finals in the wee small hours of the morning.
2) Putting this meet at this time means world champs swimmers aren't tempted to come to the meet and try for a better swim than they had in Australia. Which gives more inexperienced swimmers (or those veterans aiming for a comeback) a chance to get a chance to swim in finals and get pushed out by someone like Hoff, Phelps or the rest. Also, they can see the times others are going and know what they need to do if they want to have a shot at the Olympics next year. If I were going to NY this week, I'd be happy it was scheduled now.
3) If memory serves, spring nationals is always held the last week of March, one week after men's NCAA. Why should USA Swimming change their calendar for this meet? I know there is no big summer meet this year, but there are probably going to be a lot of college swimmers who will benefit from having it so close to NCAAs.
Frank Thompson;84503]I don't understand the scheduling of this meet...............snip.............. CBC Canadian TV.
Just to give you guys an idea (in case anyone was thinking of envying us), CBC's coverage is a joke. 30 minutes Mon (tomorrow) to Fri. Their idea of "coverage" is to send teams of "anchors" and whatnots and CBC VIPs for sight-seeing, shopping and taped "live" interviews. They have the nerve to announce "live coverage" and show what are obviously taped Segments. What they "air" only serves to raise my Blood Pressure. And to add insult to injury, they'll try to turn some of these "shows" into travelogues.:shakeshead:
I sometimes wonder at what is considered a sport in Canada. Poker is aired on TSN (the Canadian equivalent to ESPN).
Third World coverage is -sometimes- better.,.... 'nuff said.:frustrated:
This is in my backyard so I will probably go to watch. Would like to see local Tom O'neil swim. I was right behind him at the start of last year's TOBAY triathlon for about 50 yards. That's the last I saw of him.
Here are three reasons why the timing of spring nationals/championships is not inconvenient:
1) Given that World Champs prelims are in the mid-afternoon and finals are in the middle of the night here in the States, I don't think people will be staying away from nationals to watch it on the Internet.
They can watch prelims in NY, go home/to the hotel and watch Worlds' prelims and then watch nationals/championships finals in NY. If they can, they can stay up and watch worlds finals in the wee small hours of the morning.
2) Putting this meet at this time means world champs swimmers aren't tempted to come to the meet and try for a better swim than they had in Australia. Which gives more inexperienced swimmers (or those veterans aiming for a comeback) a chance to get a chance to swim in finals and get pushed out by someone like Hoff, Phelps or the rest. Also, they can see the times others are going and know what they need to do if they want to have a shot at the Olympics next year. If I were going to NY this week, I'd be happy it was scheduled now.
3) If memory serves, spring nationals is always held the last week of March, one week after men's NCAA. Why should USA Swimming change their calendar for this meet? I know there is no big summer meet this year, but there are probably going to be a lot of college swimmers who will benefit from having it so close to NCAAs.
Jeff:
You bring up some valid points. The angle that I was coming from was not from a swimmers standpoint but from a media standpoint. FOX is showing this on tape delay TV everyday in prime time. FOX Sports and FOX College Sports showed 5 hours yesterday in the Eastern Time Zone. The main sponsors during this telecast are Speedo and USA Swimming. In fact every commerical break has those two and no one else. They are still showing that old Michael Phelps commerical from Athens (Everybody Put Your Hands Up) and a new one featuring Michael, Leisel Jones, and Grant Hackett. USA Swimming has a new "Make a Splash" commerical featuring Jimmy Ellis and Terance Howard. This is costing big $ to pay for this commerical time and I would think that you would want the Swimming Community to support this by watching this in prime time hours instead of getting up at 4:00 in the morning and missing swimming practice to watch it on your computer.
Tonight you have a choice if you live in NY, to either watch 4 World Records of swimming or go to the Spring Nationals.
