FCAT moves up 258 places in the Virtual Club Championships

From September 1st, 2007 to August 31st, 2009 FCAT has moved up 258 places in the Virtual Club Championships from 1216th place in the country to 958th.

Purpose: Recognize and highlight clubs that are developing athletes and achieving success at multiple levels in the club swimming continuum emphasizing the team element in club swimming. This program serves as a key part of the Athlete Development & Performance component of the Club Recognition Program.

Period: The Virtual Club Championships will be tabulated annually for both short course and long course from September 1 through August 31 of the following year. (Prior to the 2008-2009 season, short course rankings were tabulated using results from September 1 through May 31).

Tabulation: All registered USA Swimming clubs will be scored automatically. The USA Swimming Star Times Data Base will be used in combination with the Hy-Tek Single-Year Age Group Power Point system. The program will score single age groups from 11-16 years old and a combined 17-18 age group. After all eligible swims have been scored using the power point system, a team score for each registered USA Swimming club will be calculated. The tabulation will occur once every evening.

Team Event Limit: Each team will be limited to two entries per event by age group and gender. The program will automatically tabulate which two events in combination with other teammates produce the highest team score.

Individual Event Limit: Each swimmer will be limited to four events. A swimmer may contribute only four times per season even if they age up (i.e. may have two times selected as an 11-year old and two as a 12-year old, but not four as an 11-year old and four as a 12-year old). The program will automatically tabulate which four events in combination with other teammates produce the highest team score. For larger clubs, the computer will go through more than 1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion) calculations to determine the optimum score!

Eligibility: For a swimmer’s point total on a specific swim to count toward the overall team total, the athlete and/or their swim must meet the following eligibility criteria:

Times must have been achieved while representing a registered USA Swimming club (no unattached times may be used).
Age Groups and Events: The following event results will be tabulated for both men and women:
11 & 12 year olds – 50 Fr, 100s of each stroke, 200 Free, 4/500 Free, 200 IM (8 events).
13, 14, 15, 16, 17-18 year olds – All recognized Olympic events (13 events). This means for Women the 1000y/800m freestyle and for Men the 1650y/1500m will be the long distance event scored.
No relays will be scored.
View Options: A viewer has four options to look at their club ranking:

If you select no option you will see all clubs sorted by national rank
Select Club will see only the selected club (it will show the national rank and then show VCC rank=1)
Only looking at clubs in their LSC (will show the national rank first then the rank within the LSC)
Only looking at clubs in their Zone (will show the national rank first then the rank within the Zone)
"View Detail" Option: A team may choose to look at the detail summary chart by clicking on the View Detail link on the far right-hand side of the ranking. At the beginning of the report, the viewer will see a chart that will quickly give coaches the ability to assess strengths and weaknesses of the team.

Sprint freestyle for 11 & 12 year olds includes: 50 & 100 freestyles.
Sprint freestyle for 13-18 year olds includes: 50, 100, 200 freestyles.
Distance freestyle for 11 & 12 year olds includes: 200 & 400/500 freestyles.
Distance freestyle for 13-18 year olds includes: 400/500 freestyles and either the 800/1000 freestyle for Women or the 1500/1650 freestyle for Men.
The 11 & 12 year olds in the IM column only have the 200 IM while the 13-18 year olds include the 200 and the 400 IM.
Following the chart is the detail breakdown of every swimmer that was used in the computation of the team's score.