How important is LCM to college swim?

[Anonymous]

If you have a swimmer that is great at LCM and good at SCY (or reverse that) which is more favorable when looking to swim in college?

[Anonymous]

SCY. Most meets are in SCY and championship meets are virtually always SCY, though SCM happens occasionally. (There is a talk of a permanent switch to SCM.) Some colleges might throw in the occasional LCM practice or meet if they have the pool but it's not a priority (and lots of schools only have SC pools regardless).

[Anonymous]

My first national level cut time was achieved in LCM. It was the reason I started getting recruited by higher level programs. I did end up achieving the SCY cut time in that event the following spring (which was the next time I was tapered), but that would have been too late in the recruiting cycle to have made a big difference. So I wouldn’t count out LCM as important.

[Anonymous]

I would think the starts and turns would be of great importance, whether done in SCY or LCM, but I would expect college programs to need to see excellent underwaters.

[Anonymous]

I think either is good. Sometimes swimmers with not so great starts and turns just need a tweak in coaching and some college coaches can watch and see how they can quickly fix it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SCY. Most meets are in SCY and championship meets are virtually always SCY, though SCM happens occasionally. (There is a talk of a permanent switch to SCM.) Some colleges might throw in the occasional LCM practice or meet if they have the pool but it's not a priority (and lots of schools only have SC pools regardless).

This is not a sarcastic question. I love the metric system as much as the next guy, but how would a “permanent switch to SCM” happen? Do pools that toggle between LCM and SCY already also have a SCM option that I’m just not aware of? (Ie, some sort of different bulkhead placement or other configuration?)

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I missed this question. It's a great question, really. You'll see a variety of pools at colleges. Many, even in D1, have just 25-yard pools and, yes, converting to meters would be quite expensive and colleges are not going to be all that inclined to spend that money. That said, many schools have larger pools with movable bulkheads and can do LCM, SCM, and SCY. Most D1 schools are like that and even many, though I doubt most, D3 schools have the larger pools.

College is a lot like high school. The dual and triple dual-meets are in a sense exhibition meets. What matters in college are the conference championship meets and the NCAAs. These tend to get held at the nicer more convertible pools that are capable of handling SCM. A shift to 25m would formally limit championships to those larger pools.

Right now the NCAA has a committee that's investigating the issue. My gut instinct on this is that there's not enough reason to switch from SCY to SCM. Certainly, if the NCAA were so foolish as to force all schools to convert to 25m then I think we'd lose a bunch of college swim programs. If there is switch then I think it would be just for championships and schools that train in 25y would suffer the disadvantage of training at SCY but having championships at 25m.