Places on Pan Pacific, Pan Am Teams Also at Stake in Swim Meet This Week

Besides the team titles and all the national titles at stake this week at the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships in Clovis (a suburb of Fresno), swimmers will also be competing for spots on the Pan Pacific and Pan Am teams.

U.S. Swimming is using the same format to select these two teams that it used in 1986 to select the World Championship team and the Goodwill Games team. The top two finishers in each event (and because more freestyle sprinters are needed to fill relay teams, the top four in the 100- and 200-meter freestyle events) will qualify for the U.S. Pan Pacific team that will compete in Brisbane, Australia, Aug. 13-16.

The third and fourth finishers in each event (fifth through eighth in the freestyles) will compete in the Pan Am Games in Indianapolis Aug. 9-15.

Richard Quick, the women’s swim coach at the University of Texas and the national coach through the 1988 Olympics, will coach the team going to the Pan Pacific, while Skip Kenney, the men’s coach at Stanford, will be the head coach for the team going to the Pan Am Games. The rest of the coaching staffs will be decided at the meet in Clovis. Based on a point system that gives credit for each swimmer on a team, the top five coaches will go to the Pan Pacific staff and the next four will go to the Pan Am staff.

So every event that takes place today through Friday will have an impact on American international competition next month.

The meet begins today with the 800-meter freestyle.

The Clovis West High School pool is the pool in which American swimmers set four world records during the 1983 long course meet.