Confessions of a Blogger - Seeding and Division Placement

Ok, I'm going to come clean here. I lied. Just a little. To be honest, I was just trying to play up the drama thing. Drama is compelling. That part is true. Come to think of it, I don't think I actually lied... I just didn't reveal all of the information. Time to come clean.

In the summary of our last "A" meet against Donaldson Run, I said that it was the closest score of any meet in Division 3 all season. That was 100% true. And while I didn't explicitly say so, I tried to imply that it was the most dramatic win in the Division also. That is that part that wasn't entirely true. But to stick with our Star Wars theme from last week, I'll quote some Obi Wan here, "You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

If you didn't know what you missed, then it was the most dramatic win of the season. But the reality is, that from the overall picture of Division 3, there was an EVEN MORE dramatic meet this year. But, due to timing and the fact that probably none of us were there, we didn't notice.

First, some background: a little known fact is that the NVSL Divisional schedule is set up based on forecasted rankings of the teams. The #1 and #2 teams are supposed to meet in the final week, as well as 3/4 and 5/6. It works out a lot in D1. Chesterbrook was the pre-season #1, and Overlee was the #2. They were both undefeated coming into the final week and Chesterbrook won to take home the championship according to the script. In other divisions, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. It's harder to make pre-season predictions down the table. For D3, technically Hunt Valley vs Hunter Mill was supposed to be the 1 vs 2 finale... but it didn't turn out that way for two main reasons: (1) Hunter Mill wasn't quite as strong as predicted this year, and (2) High Point Pool was much stronger than anyone anticipated. This resulted in TWO OTHER meets being the de facto dramatic battles for the D3 Championship trophy much earlier in the season.

The first meet we'll talk about involved us, as it was our meet against Hunt Valley in Week 3. As discussed previously in the blog following that meet, we had a good chance to win if the cards fell a little better for us, but alas, it was not meant to be. The meet didn't seem that dramatic because the score wasn't as close as it should have been (read the blog to review the details). In hindsight however, had we won that one, we'd have ended up in a 3-way tie for first with High Point Pool and Hunt Valley. Another little known fact is that there is no tie-breaker in the NVSL, so a three-way tie results in three trophies for three champions. So, on the bright side, we saved the NVSL some money.
And to be clear, while winning trophies is nice, we do have a lot already (go take a peek in the pavilion). We can't win them all.

Anyway, the real whopper of a meet, the grand-daddy of drama, occurred while none of us probably noticed at the time. It was High Point Pool versus Hunt Valley way back in Week 2. You'll recall that HPP came into the Swamp in Week 1 and sort of shocked us with the big win. I'm sure Hunt Valley saw that result, so was probably a little more prepared, but still had their hands full. To give you a quick meet summary, the teams split Freestyle, then High Point opened up a 5 point lead in Backstroke, and followed by adding 30 points to the lead in a dominating Breaststroke. Hunt Valley recovered some of that in the Fly, but still went into the relays TRAILING by nearly 20 points, 171-189. That meant Hunt Valley needed to win 8 out of 12 of the relays to pull off the comeback. A pretty huge task any week. Then to add to the drama, as the relays began, High Point Pool won 3 out of the first 4 relays to open up their lead even more to 204-176. With eight more relays to go, HPP only needed to win two in order to take the win and (as we know now) win the Division. But Hunt Valley would not be denied- they rattled off EIGHT STRAIGHT relay wins to come from behind and win the meet. What a clutch performance by those relay teams! I can only imagine the excitement and intensity amongst the swimmers and parents as the momentum built. That was a dramatic win for the ages, and as was the deciding factor in Hunt Valley taking the Division 3 crown this year. It's just a little bit too bad that it was in Week 2 instead of Week 5. Drama is always a bit more dramatic when it happens at the end.

What does this all mean for the Gators and the rest of Division 3 leading into next year? I'm pretty sure it means that both HPP and HV are moving up to D2. And the Gators will remain in D3 along with Hunter Mill. We'll probably be joined by Dowden Terrace (1-4) coming down from D2 as well as Crossepointe (5-0) and Oakton (5-0) both undefeated and likely moving up from D4 and D5 respectively. There will also be a sixth team... either Vienna Woods (4-1 in D4) or Vienna Aquatic (0-5 in D2). My analysis is that Vienna Woods will get the call up to D3 and Vienna Aquatic will drop all the way to D4 instead. We'll see. This is all just speculation. The actual seeding meeting happens in February.


And with that, we are now at the point of the swim season where the "team" format is over. The meets are no longer scored with resulting wins and losses in the standings, instead each swimmer is looking to achieve individual glory (while representing the Gators, of course). So, good luck to all of those swimmers heading to Divisional Championships on Saturday. As a reminder to readers, each swimmer's time at the Divisional Championships is the only determining factor for who gets into All-Stars in August. Previous seed times are nice and may look good on paper, but every swimmer needs to show up and hit those times at the Divisional meet to make the cut. We'll definitely have a few Gator All-Stars, but the big question is how many? And I'm sure we're going to see lots of personal best times and maybe even a few more Gator (and perhaps NVSL?) records broken. Check back later to see how it goes!