Expanded individual fields for state swimming overdue, welcome sight

One of the tasks each February I dreaded — until it was thankfully automated — was projecting atlarges in real time for the state swimming meet coming out of Division I district competition that Saturday.

Because the four districts around Ohio don’t run concurrently, it led to some agonizing waits for information.

Although the process might have been worse.

The only way to do it fairly quickly was to start in one district that was completed, type up the third through 18th placers and keep plugging in new times for all events and deleting those knocked out from each of the four districts until you had the list of 16 fastest at-larges.

The last one to compile, by my choice, was the Northeast District at Cleveland State.

There was a thrill in seeing who made it.

Coming out of CSU, more times than not you knew, especially in D-I, the proverbial end of the road had come before compilation.

But then there were the times it was close. Too close.

After a few hours of crunching numbers, you would see how close it was going to be for a swimmer, someone whose hard work you had witnessed first-hand for years on end.

And their toil for a state berth — for many performers, seeking their first — would come down to the thinnest of margins.

Then the cringing began: “Oh wow, they missed by .01.”

The reason for sharing this anecdote is because while this will still inevitably happen, the path to state has been widened.

Quietly, the Ohio High School Athletic Association made a tweak to district-to-state qualifiers this year for swimming in individual events.

Instead of two automatics from each district, then a crazy free-for-all for 16 at-larges — there will now be three automatics from each district, then a crazy free-for-all for 20 at-large spots.

So when state preliminaries are contested in Canton, there will now be four prelim heats in each individual event for a field of 32 as opposed to three heats with a field of 24.

It adds extra time to Day 1 at state.

But it also adds hope for a lot more swimmers to have a window toward advancement.

Good.

We live in a day and age in which some people can’t stand expanded opportunity.

“Let’s give everyone a participation trophy,” they’ll bellow.

To some extent, they may have a point when we do go too far in rewarding mediocrity from sport to sport.

With swimming, however, this is reasonable and welcome.

I hope wherever she is, she won’t mind me sharing this anecdote.

But in the early 2010s, Riverside had a really good girls distance freestyler, one of the Beavers’ first state-caliber swimmers and still one of their best in program history, named Jodi Turk.

One year, she was third in 500 free at the D-I CSU District. I was so confident she would make it to state that, in my story that night, I wrote it as if her making it was almost a foregone conclusion.

If she was only one spot off automatic qualification, after all, how could she not be firmly within the 16 at-larges?

Unfortunately, there was a problem.

The other districts were fast that year in girls 500 free — to the point where Turk did not qualify.

So whenever I have News-Herald coverage area D-I swimmers these days who take third, one spot off an auto berth, I don’t assume anymore. It’s called, today and always, my “Jodi Turk rule.”

By expanding the automatics and at-larges, it has several benefits.

It provides more value to autos coming out of district, no matter if one district happens to be faster in a given event.

There’s even more value now, as well, in striving for an automatic, so it’s not left up to chance.

At the same time, you’re expanding at-larges by four, which is great.

Some trends tend to be obvious with district swimming.

One is the Southwest District, especially in D-I, is silly fast from year to year.

The Northwest and Central/East/Southeast tend to be a rung below that, but still pretty good.

The Northeast is loaded in D-II, but tends to have a tough time competing for at-larges in D-I against the aforementioned “silly fast” Southwest and elsewhere.

By making it a 32-swimmer field in each individual event, more competitors who were on the outside looking in under their respective district’s circumstances will have an increasingly better opportunity.

Then, by the time you get to Canton for Day 1 prelim heats, yes you’re adding time to the window there with one additional heat in each individual event.

It will be difficult to advance to Day 2 with fourheat prelims, of course. But there will be those awesome stories of swimmers whose district performance didn’t go well but was good enough due to a bad start or turn who put it back together in Canton and leapfrog to a Day 2 ‘B’ final.

If you’re getting more schools and swimmers incorporated into that atmosphere, within reason as far as time, who cares?

There’s nothing wrong with showing more people it’s possible to aspire toward that goal of the state meet.

Over the last several years, to the point of annoyance for myself and for them, I’ve stood across from some of our great News-Herald coverage area D-I swimmers at CSU, asking about state in hypotheticals.

For most, it didn’t work out. For a few, though, it did.

For some of those few, it was barely. But they could say they got their one shot at the state meet.

They tasted that atmosphere, got in the pool and did the best they could to advance. That was enough. There is no “let’s give everyone a participation trophy” in this move.

Expanding the fields is a win-win for swimmers across the state and for the sport.

So when we get to district weekend this time, we can refresh for automated projections with more company.

Daring to dream is not a bad thing.

Neither is getting that done with reasonably expanded opportunity.