By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
The inaugural CSCAA Dual Meet Challenge is in the books, with the favored Arizona State men and Virginia women coming away with the initial titles.
The four participating programs from Arizona State, Tennessee, Michigan, and Virginia took a big leap. They sacrificed their traditional mid-season invites to attempt a new format that is more focused on ‘win this meet’ than the usual mid-season ‘lock up spots for the NCAA Championships.’
The inaugural edition of the event definitely garnered attention. Getting attention for a new format is unsurprising – it was interesting, it was outside of the norm, and it included big teams (including the Virginia women doing Virginia women things). The times were fast, swimmers hit NCAA ‘A’ cuts, and all-in-all, it attracted eyeballs.
Reviews overall from the fanbase was mixed. The two biggest critiques were around the scoring system (that led to a 43-1 Virginia victory over a very good Michigan team) and the confusion over having men’s and women’s teams follow different paths.
As one SwimSwam commenter (who happens to be a fan of the winning Virginia women’s team, none-the-less) put it: There were 14 separate meets (7 Men, 7 Women); only 2-3 were even competitive. The same commenter, ACCaholic, also expressed frustration trying to keep up with the substitutions.
But, that doesn’t mean the baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater. If you went back and watched original basketball, you would probably hate that too. Among other things, there was no dribbling, and there was a jump ball after every score.
SwimSwam reached out to coaches from all four participating programs, and as of publishing received a response from Matt Kredich, the head coach of the University of Tennessee. The Tennessee men finished 2nd and the women finished 3rd.
Kredich generally said he liked the meet, and said that he thinks the risk was worth it.
“I really appreciate Herbie, Todd, and Matt for being willing to do something different that was full of unknowns, all in the spirit of pushing the sport forward,” he told SwimSwam via email. “I think all of us have achieved some success by taking chances. Speaking for myself I’ve experienced some brutal failures as a result, but the goal is always to glean as much information as possible from those experiences and use that information to get better.”
Kredich shared a list of things he thought was good, and a group that he thought needed improvement.
What was good:
Last year we kept hearing that in order for our sport to be watchable, we need unpredictability. There were a few features that added that element in a way we don’t usually have. A new scoring system that forced the coaches think differently! Instead of just plugging in times and knowing the fastest times would score the most points, we had to anticipate choices, manage risk, and try to create advantages through exercising a bit of game theory. It was really fun, different, and challenging for the coaches. I think the athletes appreciated and embraced it as well. The timeouts. Those gave us the chance to control and customize (a bit) the timeline for our athletes who were doing more than one (or two) swims in a short period of time. The 2nd meet in a day as a reward for winning the first meet of the day. That was really cool, especially the fact that it wasn’t really known until the very end. UVA and Michigan men went to the last leg of the last relay, and Michigan was rewarded with another meet while UVA was done, no matter what they had planned. The load management vs points question for each athlete had to be considered at every point. There is a belief that doing several events in a short period of time might fry people, and also that in the last meet people may be able to do less than they were earlier due to fatigue. We pushed most of our best swimmers pretty hard early in the weekend, and while meet 2 on day 2 was tough, we had some really impressive performances on short turnaround. We also held up pretty well on Day 3. I personally learned a lot, and the swimmers who swam the most gained a ton of confidence. However we didn’t push everyone that hard, and all coaches had a similar combination that I know is tailored to their own knowledge about the people they coach. It was fun to guess how other coaches would make the same decisions. Predicting those decisions for opposing teams adds uncertainty to the lineup strategy. Event repetition for the best swimmers. Our 200 guys got better and better just by racing the 200 over and over. Ella got better by racing the 500 a few times. Pedro in the 100. Instead of having “50 day” and then “200 day” and then “100 day”, they got to do those races on repeat under pressure. We never get to do that and I think it was really powerful.Kredich also said he liked the 1.5 hour format, as well as the instant-update scoring and scoring graphics. “This has to become the industry standard,” Kredich emphasized.
He also liked the head-to-head format. “That concept needs to be pushed. I think it can be applied to diving as well.”
Diving was not included in the dual meet challenge this year.
Kredich also shared ways he thought the event could be improved that largely echoed what the spectators said.
Things to improve:
Not sure this scoring system is the best. I think we should test others, although I don’t have an immediate answer. I would like to have it be round robin with a championship and 3rd place meet at the end. I don’t know for sure that would be better, but I would have liked to have swum Virginia at some point – neither our men or women swam them. I like different event orders. I think we can make that one of the variables. I didn’t like what looked like “strategic losing”. Everyone has a right to manage load, but I just think that makes the meet less watchable and far less interesting. I’m not sure how to get around this.Ultimately, I think coach Kredich is right. The head-to-head is great. The 90 minute format is great. Having real scoring updates and scoring graphics is so obvious, but so great. But the scoring system as performed isn’t quite right.
But it was a start. No change is going to be perfect on the first shot, but the consensus over the last 24 months was that we need a change, and these four programs partnered with the CSCAA to take a leap on that change. It’s now time to follow the big change with smaller changes until we find something that fits about right.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Tennessee Head Coach Matt Kredich Shares What He Liked, Didn’t Like from Dual Meet Challenge
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