Championship Dreams Dashed: Technical Glitch Denies NCS Meet Entry
By Neve Murphy and Zinnia Khan, Opinion Section Editor and DEIB Director
Thirteen Acalanes High School swimmers, primed for their shot at glory in the North Coast Section (NCS) meet, faced an unexpected hurdle – denied entry not by the stopwatch, but by an internet glitch.
On the afternoon of April 30th, the NCS commission informed Acalanes head swim coaches Brett Usinger and RJ Scott that their swimmers who qualified for the NCS championship competition would not be allowed to compete at the meet due to an error in submitting time entries for the athletes.
To be eligible to compete in the NCS swim meet, athletes must swim a time that meets the set qualifying standards for each event. The NCS takes the top 40 times in the section and if there are not 40 swimmers who achieved the qualifying mark for a certain event, they will admit the top swimmers with times between the qualifying mark and a separate consideration mark until the quota of 40 is met.
In order for their swimmers to attend, coaches must submit entries for the swimmers that qualified for the meet through an online platform called Club Assistant. The website opened for entries for swimmers that met the qualifying mark in March and all final entries were due by April 28, 2024 at 1:15 pm.
When swim Head Coach Brett Usinger tried to submit entries for his athletes, an error occurred that prevented the entries from submitting successfully. Preceding the finalization date of the time entries, Usinger reached out to the NCS Commission asking for confirmation that the times went through, and did not hear back until after the due date that they had not gone through.
“My understanding is that NCS was aware of this issue prior to publishing the final entry list on Monday, April 29th. So even though the Acalanes entries were not submitted prior to 1:15pm on Sunday, April 28th, there was time to remedy the situation before the official entries were finalized,” Former Acalanes Swim Coach and Meet Director Jeff Miller said.
Blueprint Photo/ Audrey Martin
Principal Eric Shawn and Usinger predict that internet connectivity issues caused this error, a conclusion that they shared with athletes in an email on the afternoon of May 1. This revelation put an end to any hope to change the NCS’ decision.
“We have done everything that we can at this point to try and change the decision. A lot of time was spent trying to find evidence that we could use with the North Coast Section to try and get them to change their decision. [Despite] all of our efforts to do so, we could not find the evidence we needed so the decision was made by the North Coast Section that they would not accept our entries,” Athletic Director Randy Takahashi said.
The swim team and the Acalanes community offered their support for these 13 swimmers and tried to convince NCS to make an exception to their rule by taking to the internet. The 13 swimmers posted a video on their team’s Instagram account explaining the situation, which garnered 72,000 views in the first couple of days that they posted it.
News platforms across the country picked up the story, with coverage coming from KTVU Fox 2, ABC 7, NBC Bay Area, and national swimming news organization SwimSwam.
“It definitely hurts a lot having the biggest meet of my career be ripped away from us… [so] we wanted to get as much attention to the issue as possible,” Varsity Swimmer and senior Cale Hansen said.
Despite the rallying of these swimmers and the Acalanes community, the NCS remained unyielding in their stance surrounding entry deadlines. On Wednesday, May 1, NCS published an official decision stating that they would not allow the team to compete. The statement was as follows:
“Acalanes High School did not submit their NCS swim team entries for this weekend’s championships before the mandatory deadline of April 28, 2024, at 1:15 pm. This occurred after a reminder was sent out to all NCS member schools by the Section office that the deadline was mandatory and no exceptions for late entries would be made. The procedures and consequences for failing to follow these championship procedures were agreed to by NCS member schools. Acalanes did submit timely entries for its diving team.”
Blueprint Photo/ Audrey Martin
On the Dons swim team, 13 athletes qualified to attend the NCS meet. Frosh Anna Motes and Kendall Lee, Sophomores Audrey Martin and Ella Del Rosario, Junior Sadie Suppiger, and Seniors Brooklyn Plomp, Sophie Hendrickson, Taryn Veranda, Olivia Hoppe, Alexander Butler, Cale Hansen, Hans Ramierez, and Parker Etnyre all planned on attending. Of these swimmers, Plomp, Hoppe, Hendrickson, Veranda, Butler, Hansen, Ramierez, and Etnyre are seniors making the 2024 NCS meet their last chance to compete for a place at the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Championships.
For senior swimmers, the NCS meet would only have been their third chance to compete.
“As a senior this is really devastating because I already didn’t have a freshman year due to Covid, and now I can’t swim during my final year here. I’ve worked so hard this season to make it to NCS, and now I’m extremely disappointed that I don’t have the opportunity to swim,” Hendrickson said.
This decision also impacts younger swimmers, who might rely on opportunities such as NCS to be noticed by college recruiters.
“College recruiters are going to be at NCS this weekend, and they’re going to be at state this weekend, and Acalanes isn’t there. And that’s a shame,” Acalanes Swim Team Parent Erin Schlehr said.
Conversations have arisen in the past surrounding NCS’ lack of leeway or grace period for late entries.
“There have been instances in the past where exceptions have been made following the “mandatory” entry deadline for the NCS meet. No two situations are the same, so then it comes down to meet officials to determine when they will or won’t allow exceptions… The reasoning of “No exceptions are allowed” doesn’t sit well with me because exceptions have been allowed multiple times in the past,” Miller said.
In 2012, the NCS allowed 40 Heritage High School swimmers to participate in the meet after a technical issue prevented coaches from entering their times on time. According to Miller, officials never made an official determination about whether it was an issue on the end of Heritage swim coaches or Hytek, the meet software they used at the time, but with minor adjustments to the seeding of the meet, all Heritage High School swimmers were permitted to compete.
Due to the variance in every instance like this, Miller does not believe that NCS should make changes to its policy, but some people working closely with the Acalanes swim team believe a grace period could be beneficial in preventing a similar situation.
“The USA Swimming Association has a deadline and then a grace period of two days to make changes. And if we had had that here this would not have been an issue, and the kids would have been able to swim,” Schlehr said.
Blueprint Photo/Audrey Martin
Additionally, some members of the Acalanes swim team hope that NCS can make updates to their protocol surrounding a grace period for technical difficulties.
“Even though they didn’t let us swim, we still hope to share our story so that we can make changes to the NCS entry system so this problem doesn’t continue to happen to other teams in the future,” Hendrickson said.
