Last week, the 2014 NCAA DIII Swimming Qualifying Times were announced. This latest revision of the time standards brought significant changes to the Automatic ("A") time standards, elimination of "A" time standards for relays, and slight changes to "B" time standards.
The 2014 automatic time standards were calculated by taking the average time of the previous three year's 1st place finishers. The result: dramatically faster automatic time standards in every individual event.
After the 2012-2013 season, where over 20 men met or exceeded the "A" qualifying standard in the 100 butterfly, it was clear that a change would be coming for next season. The drastic lowering of the automatic time qualifications in individual events essentially ensures that a repeat of last year's abundance of "A" qualifiers will never happen again. In fact, given how fast the 2014 time standards are, it wouldn't be surprising to see no one meet the "A" cut during mid-season or even Conference Championship meets. For example, the Women's 50 freestyle automatic cut was 23.35 in 2013. In 2014, the automatic time standard is 22.91. You can compare this year and last year by clicking here for 2013 standards, and here for 2014 standards.
The other major change is that in 2014, there will be no automatic qualifying standards for relays. Because the NCAA selection process takes the top 16 times in each relay, the NCAA committee has decided that simply having a "B" standard and then taking the fastest 16 teams under that standard is sufficient.
"B" time standards usually change slightly from year to year and 2014 is no different. The "B" cuts for 2014 align themselves quite well with what one might have predicted after 2013.
What do these changes mean? Surprisingly, very little. The selection process for the meet remains the same. The only major difference is that there is almost no chance of any particular event having more than a small handful of automatic qualifiers--and, obviously, there will be no automatic qualifiers in relays. However, eliminating the possibility that any particular event is drastically over-qualified enables the number of swimmers selected into other events to rise.
