By CHARLIE SPRANG
Courier-Post Staff

Is the power point system the best way to determine qualifying and seeding for the state tournament?

That's the hot topic these days. It has actually led to some intelligent discussion on the Internet swimming forum.

The responses range from agreeing with the present format to suggestions of change to a format that relies on records. Someone even suggested a plan to use records and factor in strength of schedule. Now that's really opening a can of worms.

For those of you who may not know, the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association has established the criteria. There is a chart that assigns a point value to a specific time for an event. This chart may be found on the NISCA website or through links on the NJSIAA website or the South Jersey Interscholastic Swimming Association website.

There are a maximum of 200 points in each event. The faster one swims, the higher the point value.

Here's an example: A swimmer who goes 5:10.34 in the 500 free would get 121 points, while another swimmer who goes 5:00.16 would get 137 points.

All three swimmers in individual races count and two of your three relays. Since diving isn't contested in the tournament, it's not counted. A team submits two power point meets, along with the corresponding meet sheets, to the state and the average is used to seed teams.

Is the system perfect? No, not when you factor in the human element. Let's face it, anytime you work with numbers mistakes are possible. Just remember the last time you tried to balance your checkbook and couldn't find the error even though it was staring you in the face.

"You're only submitting two meets, but you're pointing out more than two meets to get the two best," Haddonfield coach Bob Querubin said. "It's a difficult task. You have to put times to numbers and add everything up. The higher the degree of difficulty in entering, the greater the opportunity for mistakes."

A prime example is Public South A this year. A mistake was discovered in Shawnee's entry and the bracket had to be reseeded. It happens.

Another oddity about the power points system is a team can win a meet but still not have more power points than the team it beat.

"We beat Kingsway this year and power pointed around 2,200, Kingsway had 2,400-,2500," Gloucester Catholic Kevin Nolan said. "A couple of years ago we tied Notre Dame in the tournament and when they power pointed the meet we lost by 200 points. It all depends on the strategy the coach uses in putting his lineup together.

"Could the power point system be better? I don't know. But I don't know if there is a better way. You can't go by records then you get into a BCS (Bowl Championship Series) situation."

The problem with using records is it would be impossible to compare competitive levels between the leagues and the schools that swim independent schedules.

Would Woodstown, with a 7-0 record, which was achieved largely against other Tri-County schools, be undefeated in the South Jersey League?

Then you always run the risk of teams scheduling inferior opponents just to get a `W.'

"Going by power points stresses more of a team concept," Vineland coach John Casadia said. "It awards total team effort."

Casadia finished by saying, "it's not broken, so don't fix it. That's my comment."

My take

The power point system is still the best way to qualify and seed for the tournament. It's not perfect and it won't ever please everyone, but it works.

The thing is, it puts every team on equal ground in that coaches know the system, they get to choose the meets they want to power point and they get to structure their lineup to maximize the point total.

The only thing left to chance is how the swimmers will perform on that particular day, and that's something no one can control.

Heart

No team got more out of its ability this year than Our Lady of Mercy Academy.

The Villagers have no full time swimmers, just a bunch of girls that hit the pool for the first time on Nov. 15 and worked hard to improve.

They finished fourth at the Coaches Invitational and were second at the Gloucester County Meet with 100 percent best times.

As the seventh seed in the Non-Public B state tournament, they gave second-seeded Mt. St. Dominic's everything it could handle and then some, losing 86-84.

"We tried so hard," junior Emily Fralinger said. "We knew what we had to do, we just came up a little bit short. But I thought we did a great job."

Eustace next

Bishop Eustace, by virtue of its 93.5-79.5 win over Wildwood Catholic, will take on Mt. St. Dominic's at West Windsor North on Wednesday.

The Crusaders' 200 medley relay of Caitlin McGroarty, Taylor Morganti, Julie DeMareo and Meg McCotter won to get things started. Each won an individual event as well.

McCotter captured the 200 IM; McGroarty, the 100 backstroke; Morganti, the 100 breaststroke; and DeMareo, the 50 free and 100 butterfly.

"Julie DeMareo winning two events was a big lift for us," Bishop Eustace coach Mike Parker said. "It was an exciting meet. It was as charged up as I've seen the girls get in three years."

Bishop Eustace's other win came from senior Cara Choplin in the 100 free.

Heart, Part 2

Holy Spirit beat Monsignor Donovan 92-78 Thursday in the first round of the Non-Public A state tournament. The Spartans gave new meaning to the well-worn phrase, "step up."

According to coach Mike Schiavo, the Spartans power pointed 470 points higher than their seed of 2,920 points. Of their 51 swims in the meet, they had 48 lifetime, not season, best times.

Schiavo said it was the single greatest example of improvement in one meet that he's ever witnessed for a girls' team.