HUNTINGTON BEACH, California, March 7. THE National Club Swimming Association (NCSA) has announced that this year's NCSA All-Star Team will be sent to Japan. The NCSA will begin the selection process for the All-Star Team at the NCSA Junior Nationals taking place March 15-19 in Orlando, Fla., with free live and on-demand finals coverage available on SwimmingWorld.TV at the Event Landing Page (http://tv.swimmingworldmagazine.com/events/2011-ncsa-junior-nationals).
The All-Star Team selected from the meet will head to Japan Sept. 23-24 for a dual meet hosted by Itoman Swim School and Osaka Swimming Association in Osaka, Japan.
The competition will be held in long course and involve both preliminaries and finals. While older senior swimmers will be involved in the preliminaries, only four, 18 and under swimmers from each country will advance to the evening finals in each event. The events will include all distances, including five relays. The scoring system will be level to maximize the team concept in the competition.
"We are very excited about the unique qualifying system for the NCSA Team, which will consist of 26 male swimmers and 26 female swimmers," NCSA's Bob Gillett said. "Also, eight coaches will be selected based upon individual swimmer placement on the team. Because the meet is long course, we have decided to do a two-stage qualifying. It should be very motivating for the swimmers and coaches."
Stage 1 will be the NCSA Junior Nationals, which will be a short course yards meet in both preliminaries and finals. An "event pool" will be selected in each event, consisting of the top 16 available swimmers.
Then, Stage 2 will be the U.S. National Championships and U.S. Junior Nationals, in August 2011. The team will then be finalized off the long course performances in Stage 2, with only the swimmers in the "event pool" being eligible for the trip.
"We feel this unique two-stage selection method will provide two very motivating opportunities for the swimmers and coaches," Gillett said. "Work hard to make the ‘event pool' this spring; and your chances of making the trip are much more defined. Then these swimmers will have that extra little motivation to do a great job this summer in training and preparing to make the team in long course during Stage 2."
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