Tuesday, May 13, 2014

How do we get 24 to high school state?



VS.


The California Interscholastic Federation will hold their first state championship in Clovis next year.  Read more here.

Early plans are for the meet to include 32 entrants in each event, with each of CIF's 10 sections getting a specific amount of guaranteed spots in each event.

Don't you wish TISCA had been pushing the UIL - seriously pushing - to get twenty-four (24) to Austin these past few years?

Such a shame that we only take sixteen (16) per event, leaving All-Americans at home.

The edge California athletes will gain over our kids will be tremendous.  More of their top swimmers will advance to their state meet without having to rest/shave to qualify.

With our new alignments (6A & 5A) and only eight (8) call-up slots available in each, many of our top kids will have to rest/shave for region - maybe even district!

9 comments:

Kevin Murphy said...

An official effort by Tisca is being made to increase the entries from 16 to 24 at the Texas State Meet, for 6A and 5A swimmers and divers.
In addition, an official Tisca effort is being made to establish/add a 4A and under Division at the Texas State Meet, with 4 Regions and 16 entries.

Trey Hayes, the Tisca President has the specifics of the two Proposals.

Anonymous said...

Its about time Texas move forward. Connecticut is already ahead of California and Texas. There are other states as well. The state also needs to look at how district is run as well. Every district needs to be same number. Every district team should swim each other in the regular season.

Kevin Murphy said...

The UIL makes the rules on number of entries at State. The Tisca Coaches Organization makes "recommendations" to the UIL. The UIL has the power and we have none. If you want to get involved, so "Texas can move forward", then contact Coach Hayes, our Tisca President, at Lubbock ISD, and I am sure he can put you to work. Maybe you have more experience or are better connected, that you can help the rest of us "move forward".

The rest of us have been working hard and intelligently to help improve Texas HS Swimming for everyone.

As concerns "Every district team should swim each other in the regular season", there is no format in place that establishes that as a required feature. I would not be opposed to that idea, but I am sure many Texas HS coaches enjoy the freedom to schedule as they choose, for their own teams. In some cases, over the last nine years, teams in our assigned district have not wanted to accept the challenge of swimming us, so we have had to look outside our District and sometimes even outside our city to find competition willing to race us.

I never post anonymously, so feel free to engage me in discussion.
I am available at Southlake Carroll HS in Southlake, Texas.

Kevin Murphy

Button said...

floated round robin of duals w/district opponents and it went nowhere. still think it's a great idear. y'all won't get sponsor-types interested, though. they'd rather swim the same eight kids in the fitty/hunnert free at the east cupcake invite than make out a dual meet line-up.

sad to hear connecticut has jumped ahead of texas. so danged many liberal genius minds up there...guess it was just a matter of time before they showed us ignorant folks up...

splitting to a third division means something will have to give. unless it's done without taking anything away from the current two divisions, i is agin it!

how about we go for 32 qualifiers in 6a and another 32 in 5a. kids wouldn't have to swim on second (or third?) shaves/rests. that would get some 4a kids to the 'show' as well.

would also make prelims at state meet more meaningful.

it would also guarantee we'd have zero empty lanes in finals.

that's just plain disgraceful to see...

Anonymous said...

I have a hard time understanding why at Texas State meet, 16 kids race twice in two days in any given event, I mean, same 16 kids!

Why can't they make the prelims accommodate more kids than the finals? Isn't that common sense?

kevin murphy said...

Agreed, that is why the 24 to State concept has been pushed forward. 24 in Prelims, 8 more kids at the Texas State Meet, then 16 fastest in Finals.

1. UIL wants "Regional Representation" (someone from EVERY Region represented at the Texas State Meet.
Most involved in Texas HS Swimming have heard this before. (I heard it first about 10 years ago.)

2. 24 prelim entries seems to be all the UT pool could accommodate and still run the meet, "as is", (two sessions, big schools and smaller schools) and stick close to the current timeline. **One extra heat per event would add about one hour to each session. 32 in each division would likely need to have two different meets, in two different locations, or on two different weekends. Probably too big a change for the UIL to fathom.

3. The 4A and under division, with 16 entries, would only fly if there were an alternate venue on the same days, or held on a different weekend.

*Obviously, a 4A and under Division could not fly at UT, on the same days as the 6A and 5A, unless there were a "subtraction" of competitive opportunities for the 6A and 5A swimmers and divers.

*****We wouldn't want that at all!

Will be interesting to see how the UIL Meeting goes in June.



kevin murphy

Lion King said...

I'm willing to bet at the meeting in June, KM, that swimming gets shafted again. "Why, we don't need to copy any other state, we're the UIL!"

Just sayin'. Some folks are so afraid of change that they love to live in the past. When was the last change in UIL swimming??? Right. That's too dang long.

Button said...

we've had a couple of changes since the two-division split that have helped our athletes (unlimited call-ups from a region, consolation finals at region).

changes that have hurt our athletes (appendix b disaster, take-over of officiating, ban on tisca posting of unofficial call-ups) have resulted in some very negative feelings toward the uil leadership.

they've relied on bad advice (or none at all) during some decision-making in recent years and it's alienating the core.

maybe they'll snap out of it in time to avoid making the potentially disastrous move to a third division and instead allow us more qualifiers for the divisions we currently have.

Button said...

propose 32, 'accept' 24...