Ripple effects
Like most sports this year, many changes for athletes, format and fans
The formats for the District 11 wrestling championships that took place this past weekend were restyled and revamped, several times over, by district officials to properly conform to COVID-19 protocols and to present athletes with the best possible postseason experience.
The sites were new. The schedules were changed. The atmospheres were subdued. A lot was different.
“A wise man told me,” District 11 chairman Bob Hartman said, “if this was really the best way to do things, we’d do it like this every year. It’s not. But this is our reality right now.”
Same as this year’s wrestling championships, the District 11 swimming championships set for March 6-7 at Parkland High School will look a whole lot different due to the ongoing pandemic.
And not everyone is pleased with the reworked parameters of the two-day, two-classification, dual-gender, mega-meet. The biggest change — the one that has caught the attention of the area’s small yet passionate swim base — is there will now be eight qualifiers for each individual event, as opposed to the usual 24 from seasons past.
The District 11 diving championships, scheduled for Saturday at Emmaus, also will include eight qualifiers per classification, per gender.
That number, according to Hartman and swimming chairman Ray Ramella, will allow the meet to be conducted in a safe and lawful manner, as well as qualify the top athletes to the next month’s PIAA championships.
“First and foremost, we have to deal with the capacities our schools are capable of,” Hartman said. “Luckily enough for us, we have a school with a facility as big as Parkland’s natatorium and Parkland was gracious enough to host us. The reality is on-deck, at the state mandated 10%, the number is 46 people.
“Unfortunately, we had to reduce the qualifiers to eight in each event and each classification. That stinks and that’s challenging, we get that. But we have meet officials, we have sports medicine workers and the computer operators, we have coaches and, of course, we have swimmers. We have all those individuals included in a championship meet and we get to 46 in a hurry.”
Parkland athletic director Bill Dreisbach confirmed the pool’s deck capacity is 460 and the balcony capacity is 750. So, at 10% of those numbers, in order to meet the state’s indoor requirements, a maximum of 46 people would be permitted on deck and 75 in the bleachers.
The championships will be closed to spec
“A wise man told me, if this was really the best way to do things, we’d do it like this every year. It’s not. But this is our reality right now.”
— District 11 chairman Bob Hartman
tators, Hartman said, and media and other select personnel will be restricted to the balcony.
Emmaus coach Tim O’Connor expressed disappointment in the district’s decision to reduce the number of qualifiers from 24 to eight. O’Connor said he and his coaching colleagues were expecting 16.
“We are really disappointed,” he said. “After coming out of the shutdown in January, within a few weeks, we were notified of 16 qualifiers and I really think everyone was really happy about that. At this point we were the only area who really did not have our kids exposed to a live meet all season, which is difficult because of the difference in energy with just one team present. But with 16 qualifiers everyone felt that was really fair and most districts were trying to move from eight to 16, but even settling on 12 if available.
“In the last week, most districts have been expanding their live meets and their district meets. I know in other districts they confer with some swim coaches, as not many ADs and principals truly understand our sport.”
O’Connor pointed out that the National Federation of High Schools, as well as the CDC, classify swimming as a “low-risk sport.”
“Other sports are having live championships with as many people as would be on the pool deck for each event. The mantra is it is all for the kids but the safest sport right now is having the most restrictive championships,” O’Connor said. “Those kids go home one night ecstatic they earned a legit shot at competing in a District 11 championship, only to have it taken
away within weeks of the competition.”
Instead of the usual three heats per individual event (and two for relays), there will be only one heat this year — the championship race.
Moravian Academy coach Shannon Danaher called the reduced number of qualifiers “tough” on swimmers and coaches alike. She said one of her swimmers, Fulvio D’Avella of Notre Dame-Green Pond, reached the medal stand a season ago despite being seeded outside the top eight in the Class 2A 50 freestyle. D’Avella took third.
In most cases (almost all), district champions and state qualifiers come from among the top eight qualifiers.
“Under the rules of 2021,” Danaher said, “there will be swimmers with talent who don’t make the cut. It is especially challenging this year due to the shortened season. Some swimmers have had to quarantine and miss weeks at a time. It is easy to see how someone might peak later in the season.”
As usual, expect to see a lot of Emmaus and Parkland athletes on the podium in Class 3A. O’Connor’s Green Hornets and Robert Robitaille’s Trojans are the dominant teams, with Emmaus’ boys capturing 13 consecutive team titles and Parkland’s girls claiming 11 crowns in the last 12 seasons.
In Class 2A, it’s Central Catholic and Moravian Academy, along with Blue Mountain and Pottsville from the Schuylkill League, that figure to fare well.
Teams are still permitted to enter four swimmers per event, according to District 11’s revised entry form, and the fastest times will be seeded in each event. (Athletes are limited to two individual events and two relays, or one individual and three relays.)
A warm-up and cool-down schedule
will be worked out, Hartman said, and swimmers will be able to use Parkland’s auxiliary gym to spread out and wait for their events to be called.
“It’s not going to be as rapid-fire as it was,” Hartman said, “because this year it can’t be.”
Only district champions will qualify for the PIAA championships, now set for March 13 (diving) and March 19-20 (swimming) at Cumberland Valley High School.
The passion of the tight-knit swimming community is real.
Both Hartman and Ramella said they’ve received more than several emails over the past week or two from frustrated coaches and fans. Swimmers have displayed their disgust on social media, meanwhile. At least one “Sign the Petition” plea was posted by an area swimmer on Twitter last week. (As of Monday morning, there were almost 6,000 online signatures.)
“The [swimming] fans are as enthusiastic as there are in any sport,” said Ramella, the Nazareth athletic director in his third year as the district’s swimming chairman. He took over the post from his father, former Emmaus AD Dennis Ramella.
“My first year, when I saw all those people lined up at the diving championships [held the week prior to swimming] for tickets to the swimming championships, I found out about that passion quickly. Certainly, no one involved in this process was interested in reducing the numbers. But unfortunately, that’s what we had to do,” Ramella said.
Hartman said Sunday he would send out an email to District 11 schools on Monday to see if teams would prefer to conduct a virtual championship meet. (All EPC meets were virtual this season.) He anticipated, however, schools would still prefer an abbreviated live meet.
The AD at Whitehall, Hartman indicated a virtual meet is the only other option at this point.
“I get it,” he said of the frustrations of the swimming community. “We play with the hand we’re dealt. A lot of questions that come to me is they’re doing different things in different districts. Well, sure they are. District 1 is having more [16] competitors. But they’re driving to York County to hold their championship meet.
“Every district has different scenarios; different pools or facilities that are available. This is the hand we’re dealt, though, and we’re trying to make the best of it. It’s not ideal but it’s what we’re going to work with. The options are very limited.”
Despite their disappointment in the altered district meet, both O’Connor and Danaher expressed similar sentiments regarding the crazy COVID-19 2020-21 season.
“Hey, I am really happy we’re having a season,” O’Connor said. “This is great.
“The pandemic has changed our whole world,” Danaher said. “Last year we were headed up to Bucknell [for the state championships] to compete and then were told to go home without getting to swim. It is disappointing and discouraging when you have worked so hard to achieve your goals only to have access to them removed due to unforeseen circumstances. We all struggle with this. Do I empathize? Of course.
“However, if we have learned anything over the past year, it is to be grateful for what we do have. We have a swim season. We now have districts,” she said. “If things have to be modified in order to keep everyone safe and keep the season going, then so be it.”