This morning, the official NCAA Selections for the 2014 DIII National Championships were released and Claire Collins and Karl Mering made the cut! It was bittersweet, however, seeing our Men's 400 medley relay in 17th place, just one position away from making the top-16 cutoff.
For Karl, it's a 1st and 2nd place seed in the 100 and 200 butterfly, respectively. Karl will also be competing in the 100 freestyle. For Claire, it's 11th and 24th seed in the 100 and 200 breaststrokes, respectively. She will also be competing in the 50 freestyle. Why the 50 free? Why not! The air is very thin at the National Championships so why not have some fun?
At Nationals, once a swimmer is selected into the meet, he or she can swim up to 3 individual events, even without getting selected into the event or achieving an NCAA "B" time standard. So, for Claire's 50 freestyle and for Karl's 100 freestyle, each has no pressure. Each of them can cut loose and see what happens! Taking the pressure off and and allowing them to focus their efforts on their primary events.
What happens next?
We have been training since Conference ended in preparation for the official selections to come out. Now that we know that Claire and Karl are for sure going to the meet, we will keep training harder than ever! The rest of the team has been very supportive and ever-present at practice, keeping our two All-America contenders motivated and inspired. At the end of next week, we'll start backing off again, starting to rest up for the meet.
It is likely that Claire, Karl, Jenn and I will catch a flight to Indianapolis on Monday, March 17th. The Meet takes place at the IUPUI Natatorium and begins on Wednesday, March 19th and goes through Saturday, March 22nd. The NCAA covers our travel to and from the meet. Conveniently, the meet will take place during the first week of our spring break. At the conclusion of the meet, Claire and Karl will get to have a week to relax before coming back to Walla Walla for the second half of the semester. You can buy tickets to the meet here.
One final note, as much as we conjecture about the NCAA selections process, it's extremely difficult to predict accurately how many individuals in each event will be selected into the meet. Last year, only the top 13 or 14 individuals made it into the meet. This year, the top 18-20 made the cut. What will happen next year? Who knows. For all those people on the team who made "B" time cuts this year, all we can do is redouble our efforts and and see what happens with next year's selections!
