Arrangements for the 2022 Hampshire County Championships have been confirmed:

• All events long course (Conditions allow short course for 29th/30th January if Mountbatten pool cannot be configured short course)
• Closing date for entries: Tuesday 21st December @ 8pm
• Ages 10/11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17/Over
• Ages as at 31st December 2022
• There will be automatic and base(consideration) times
• Entry times to be set in Level 1,2,3,4 licensed meets on or after 1st January 2020
• Entry fees: Individual Events: £7; Team events £14 

Downloads

• Conditions
• Qualifying Times
• Schedule of Events [Version 3: Changes to order of events in session 7] 
• Meet Files [Long Course]
• Meet Files [Short Course]
• Entry Confirmation Form [MS Word Version]
• Team Declaration Form [MS Word Version]
• Poolside Pass [MS Word Version]

Disabled competitors. For 2022, disabled swimmers with a disability classification, are exempt from qualifying standards.

The recent discovery of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is a matter of concern and we will not have any clear indications of the impact, if any, on our Championships for several weeks.

We are confident in our ability to run the competition within any additional social distancing rulrd.

Please feel confident to submit your entries for this competition. We will NOT be invoicing for entry fees until it is certain that the competition will proceed, so you can ignore reference on entry confirmations that payment is due and any specific dates in the conditions.

We have had complains from clubs and swimmers in the Channel Islands about the changes to the schedule of events for the 15/over swims about the impact of the changes on travel and accommodation costs for channel island swimmers and that preliminary information about the championships included the following statements:

Arrangements for the 2022 Hampshire County Championships have been confirmed:

Given this information, HCASA feels the prograamme for 2022 must be revised to conform to the statements above. 

This is not ideal and will result in swimmers having to swim 800m and 1500m on consecutive days. This will be reviewed for 2023 and beyond.

A revised programme of events is now available (this is subject to detailed checking). The online entry system is now open. We will publish meet files as soon possible.

23rd November 2021- Full Qualifying Times updated (base times for LC 100m fly)

19th Novemer 2021 - Schedule of Events and Full Qualifying Times published, These are the first drafts and are subject to detailed checking.

The base times are VERY slow. For the majority of events, a lot of swimmers who achieve the base times will not be accepted.

So, why have base times? Because we are required to for level 1 meets.
Why so slow? Because our primary method of accepting swimmers is to have a set number per event and select the fastest entries. In this time following the COVID shutdown, we don’t know the extent to which swimmers have recovered their times to pre COVID levels and we don’t want the silly situation of very few swimmers being accepted because our assumptions about swimmers recovery were wrong.

The automatic times give top swimmers the certainty that their entries will be accepted so that they can make travel and accomodation arrangements. That is very important for swimmers from the channel islands.

Extract from Conditions:

For all individual events, the Association shall set automatic qualifying times and base level qualifying times (consideration times). Both short course and long course qualifying times shall be published. Swimmers must submit a time for each entry which has been achieved since 1st January 2020. Submitted times may be either short and/or long course and shall be the actual time recorded. All long course (50m) times will be automatically converted using the published Swim England Equivalent Performance Tables for the purpose of accepting entries and seeding. All times must be eligible for inclusion in the British Rankings and set in competitions licenced at level 1, 2, 3 or 4. Entries may be amended up to the closing date. Subsequent improved times will not be accepted. First leg relay split times are NOT acceptable. Times set in Masters competitions and appearing only in Masters Rankings are not acceptable. 

All swimmers who have achieved the automatic qualifying time shall be accepted for that event. If there is space available, swimmers who have not achieved the automatic qualifying time but have achieved the base time may be accepted. Those swimmers who are closest to the automatic time shall be accepted first. The number of additional swimmers that can be accepted will be determined on an event by event basis. The target number of swimmers for each event shall be published on the competition web site prior to the closing date for entries. No swimmer will be accepted with an entry time slower than a swimmer in a younger age group who has been rejected. 

For 2022, we anticipate that the automatic times will allow approximately half of the entrants to have certainty that they entry will be accepted.

The base (consideration) times will be set sufficiently slow that the target number of swimmers per event will be achieved. For the majority of events, we anticipate that the slowest entries accepted will be significatly faster than the base time.

The target number of accepted swimmers will be:

Swimmers and parents should be aware that it is unlikely that we will be able to accomodate any spectators because of the the need to comply with pool and gallery capacity limits.

We are keen to be able to offer live video streaming of the championships, but HCASA is not able pay the fees for  hiring a commercial video team, which would be between £6000 and £10000 for the three weekends of competition.

We are aware that there are some people in our county who provide video streaming for their clubs. If you know of anyone who might be prepared to offer this service for the County please let us know. Send an e-mail to champs@hampshireswimming.org.