Girls' States Preview

For the girls' preview, I am going to follow the same general format for the boys' preview, and leave in much of the scoring/housekeeping information so that you do not have to read both posts if you are only interested in one.

So, as many of you know, the psych sheets for the State Meet came out this past weekend (they can be found here). As it stands per The News Journal, the top 5 Girls' Teams through February 16th were:

1. Charter of Wilm. (12-0)
2. Padua (6-0)
3. St. Mark’s (10-1)
4. Concord (12-2)
5. A.I. du Pont (12-2)

For the girls, my biggest question was, even having not followed the season as closely, "where's Tatnall?" Now, obviously with all of the snow and the slew of canceled meets, it is tough to really know how teams compare, since teams like Padua have only swam 6 meets throughout the entire season. That being said, I was still shocked that Tatnall was not included, and a further look through some results shows (I think) a tie with Sanford and a loss to Archmere. So, with a small sample of meets to choose from, I can understand why Tatnall wasn't included. But, with the psych sheets out, I calculated, just as with the boys, a score sheet with all teams scoring above 100 points, and published it here.

A few notes on the score sheet:

• The top 3 rows are the relay scores - 200 Medley, 200 Free, and 400 Free, and the points each team is "seeded" with there.
• After that, each event has 4 rows dedicated to it (4 is the maximum number of entrants per team for any given event).
• In general, the darker the score box, the more points a team scores there, so it gives a nice visual representation of which teams are scoring more points and where.
• Also, the relays are in red, then the events alternate orange and green for no reason other than to clearly distinguish between the events.
• At the bottom, the final column is the expected total score for that team, and for those of you who don't wish to view the entire document, here are the scores (again, only of teams with greater than 100 points):

1. Charter - 325
2. Padua - 246
3. Tatnall - 223
4. Brandywine - 190
5. St. Mark's - 165
6. Milford - 159
7. Sanford - 150
8. Newark - 112
9. Archmere - 111
9. A.I. - 111

As compared to the Boys, there are many more teams with over 100 points, and a lot of room for change, although Charter girls seem to be comfortably sitting in first place, though they don't have a nearly 200 point cushion like the Salesianum boys.

A few comments about the meet:

• Just as a bit of a housekeeping item, a reminder on scoring:

1st=20, 2nd=17, 3rd=16, 4th=15, 5th=14, 6th=13, 7th=12, 8th=11, 9th=9, 10th=7, 11th=6, 12th=5, 13th=4, 14th=3, 15th=2, and 16th=1 for all individual events. Points are doubled for relays.

• Also, a note I probably made last year regarding relays, is that I would guess they have the most potential to change at the meet. Most relay entry times are entered as the fastest possible combination of any four swimmers on the team. However, with an entry limitation of two relays per swimmer, if a team's best 50/100 Freestyle swimmer swam in the fastest recorded time for each of the relays, now she can only be entered into two of those relays. So, the team has to give up some time in one of the relays.

• Finally, keep in mind that not all of the seed times reflect the swimmers' best times. Many swimmers have faster times than those listed in meets outside of the high school competitions that are not included in high school states seed times, and they could potentially change their places drastically at the meet.

This meet should be thoroughly exciting for at least 2nd-10th places, if not further along. Every team has another team either not far behind or not far ahead, leaving a lot up to those close races at the meet. The difference between 8th and 9th at prelims, or 16th and 17th at prelims could cause for a big difference in any of the scores, and although I'm confident that Charter has a clear advantage for first, I would say much of the other spots are up for grabs. Biggest surprise based on the psych sheets I would say is Milford, who, with two strong divers, and a few highly-placed swimmers throughout has a legitimate chance to place higher than most would have expected.

Best of luck to everyone at the meet this week, hope you all don't see any snow! If any new updates come to be before the meet I will try to post what I hear on the blog, and I will hopefully be able to get some information out after the preliminary nights on Wednesday and Thursday with team scores and finals projections.