VMAC hosted the 4A girls swimming and diving state meet last weekend. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
AURORA — The plan for the addition of a Class 3A state meet in girls swimming is taking shape.
The swimming and diving committee met on Wednesday at the CHSAA office, and spent a big portion of that meeting talking about how to approach the new third classification for girls, which was approved by the Legislative Council last April. Ultimately, they decided to recommend the addition of a third day of competition, and a rotation-based schedule whereby two classifications will compete at the same site during the weekend.
Those host sites are still to be determined, but it is likely that they will continue to be held at EPIC in Fort Collins and VMAC in Thornton.
“There were a lot of moving parts the committee had to consider, but we think they’ve come up with a plan that will work for all classes, but also ensure that we can showcase each of them,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Bethany Brookens, who oversees swimming and diving.
Going forward, the swim committee recommended that one meet begin its prelims on Thursday, and hold finals on Friday. The other two meets would remain on the Friday/Saturday schedule for their respective preliminaries and finals.
For the 2017 girls meet, the plan is to have 5A and 3A swim together, with 4A at another site. The 5A meet would begin with both swim and dive prelims on Thursday, and then come back for swim and dive finals on Friday. 4A and 3A would swim prelims on Friday, have dive prelims on Saturday morning, and then both finals on Saturday evening.
The classes would rotate in 2018, so that 3A and 4A would be together, with 3A moving to the Thursday/Friday schedule. 5A would be at its own site.
Then, in 2019, 4A and 5A would be together with 4A going Thursday/Friday. In that season, 3A would be on its own.
“We want to ensure equity in the execution of these state meets, so that’s why we decided to rotate each of the classes through each scenario,” Brookens said.
Boys swimming will remain with its current two-classification format.
This plan needs to be approved by the Legislative Council at its April meeting.