Earlier you said:
The full stop makes it sound like, they got the numbers, they got the status (and the rest is just procedural to ratify it). But have I misunderstood you and you’re really just saying, they need to get to 40 to “move forward” in the “consideration” process and that they can still not be selected?
Yes I think you have misunderstood. There are basically 2 *main components to achieving ncaa championship status.
*That is what ncaa tri thinks/assumes/has the data to showcase we did following this academic school year. The data that we think is good is now being reviewed by the NCAA ptb’s. As I said upthread, this is not an “automatic” victory. If the NCAA looks at the data and says “no”, then it’s not accepted. What I have said is that within the review/voting process, they have never denied a sport that they themselves have accepted of 40 schools meeting sponsorship. The schools themselves make their own judgement based on the rule book of acceptance of an sport’s “countable event”. So there is no NCAA person looking at each school and saying yes/no until they actually submit that data. It’s the individual school (really the sport) that assumes they are doing an countable event and thus will be accepted. So that’s why it’s not “automatically” accepted as good data, it gets reviewed/vetting by proper NCAA people and they say yes/no etc.
So this is currently where the process is. It’s also something that can take time and include back and forth between the schools on why your data (countable events) looks a certain way. That’s currently where the process is. The complete review has not been finalized as of yet (again maybe it is tomorrow, maybe it takes another 6 months).
As I have said the biggest issue beyond the 1st 40 school meeting sponsorship hurdle…You must maintain that during the whole process, and I said that was the bigger concern months ago before 2 schools were even threatening to drop and then did drop (Calvin / STAC). That will be the bigger issue cus again, ncaa tri hasn’t hit 100% compiance yet, and so to think you are going to get 40 for 40 is a mighty big ask. But we’ve set parameters to help as much as you can, but at the same time, some of the schools have roster # issues, so there is real concern. Calvin dropping was tough because they had I think 10 athletes on their roster. STAC had 1-2 so that was understandable why they’d drop it.
Big news Queens Uni head coach, Sonni Dyer, resigned this week. Multiple national champion winner, only coach in ncaa to put ncaa athletes in Olympics so far. Big lose for the sport and the ncaa movement. Hell of a coach and leader of young people. Will surely be missed as he and I talked shop with each other all the time, from my time at NCSU (club only), Guilford (ncaa), NKU (ncaa). 2 cornerstone ncaa coach’s have left their respective programs in the last month (David Winton at Drury other coach)
From his FB page:
A new chapter begins.
It’s been an incredible journey leading the Queens Univ Triathlon program for over a decade.
I’d like to thank every athlete that entrusted me with their passion for our sport, every assistant & head coach that I’ve mentored, those who guided me, everyone in the QU Ath Dept, but most of all my wife, Sandy…who has stood by me & served as an unpaid “coach mom”, chef, administrator, planner, confidant, (& ER driver).
I came to Queens to build a program, nurture a collegiate sport, & plant seeds by which its path could reach the NCAA.
In that time, we earned 15 National Collegiate Team titles, 38 All-Americans, developed numerous pro/elites, 3 Olympians (a medalist), and a handful World Cup podiums. They earned top-GPA honors and routinely saw a majority of our roster earn Scholar-All-American. I’m also so proud that many of our alumni still compete to this day.
Launch leaders.
We graduated some of the most excellent and capable human beings you’d ever meet, all from over 35 different countries who’d annually & collectively become the “United Nations of Tri”.
In that time, our teams produced 2 Coach-of-the-year honors for which I’m humbled to receive.
4 cornerstones of QU Tri:
1-We b4 me.
2-Pursue excellence…& do so w/o apology.
3-Build relationships that last.
4-Against-With-For are 3 natural phases of building culture. Accept it, but above all: Get to ‘For’.
For a decade I’ve been ask “How do you find these kids?”
It was actually very simple.
Ya build a culture of grace, mercy, sacrifice, within a space to grow & make mistakes…and then work to show how why its larger than any one of us. They’ll do the rest.
Just do what love requires while you have this time with 'em.
For sure, the days were long. But the years flew by.
Thank you, Royals.
So is this a case of folks jumping ship knowing it is about to sink?? Is the writing on the wall and they were the first to be able to read it??
I really hope not, but seems like this whole thing has been on thin ice for sometime now. But the tide of NCAA sports has taken a huge hit lately, so not surprising that our sport is going to get caught up on the negative side of that…
who are the 3 olympians besides annabel knoll ?
Seth Rider (medalist in 2024 Paris) and I think the 3rd is a male. Queens has a full ncaa women’s + club male (and female) supported program. The 3rd athlete I believe was from Europe but can’t remember exactly.
3rd guy: Felix Duchampt (Romania ‘24)
NCAA W: knoll (Tokyo ‘20)
Okay, what is the status of this? Tick, tick, tick
41 Listed for 2025-2026 including Calvin & St Thomas Aquinas College which are gone. Looks like 38 maximum if LIU postpones their inaugural year to 2026-2027.
So, what is the criteria for even being counted as a NCAA womens triathlete? From what I can see, any female who wants to be on the “team”, no matter how “slow”, can just sign up.
This is the tragedy of the way the US schools run & fund womens sports. The argument is that female inclusion doesn’t affect the men, and yet, we would have a host of men taking part in successful college triathlon programs all across the country if they could, but they can’t; to make room for women who aren’t even interested in participating. Kind of sounds like the womens’ only Kona day.
This is a whataboutism at its finest. There more than a few sports where you just have to find bodies. Almost no one throws javelin. Male throwers of the discuss or shot are often recruited from other sports.
39 ncaa tri programs for the '25-'26 school year (not counting LIU who is delaying their start). NCAA tri sport sponsorship requirements:
-4 countable events (duathlon, aquathlon, aquabike. or triathlon count as an event) against at min 1 other NCAA tri program
-3 finishers from your school and their school in order to then count
@Lurker4 just trust me on this when I say this (I know, I know you’ll come back with some silly examples of how I’m wrong). NCAA men’s tri would be no more successful than what has happened with W ncaa tri. Any ncaa sport that doesn’t have HS sport pipeline, will always struggle to draw numbers. I’ll add that at the current time now more than ever the top HS men in our sport are actually staying in the sport through various programs that are offer “scholarships” in large part because they are attached to a women’s ncaa school sponsored sport.
There’s no “host of men” who would fill rosters, just simply look at the numbers, your math ain’t mathing imo (again I have to recruit men as well as women to a full roster for the sport). There are certainly more HS aged men then women in triathlon, but it’s on such a small scale for both unfortunately. I think since covid hit, I think it was reported that 90% of the high school club programs vanished and haven’t come back. 2017-2018 was probaly the “peak” for success in high school participation numbers.
If I take the USAT list, which shows 41, and remove the 2 schools you said were out, plus the one not until next year, that is 38. Seems I am missing one?
The usat list isn’t always the most accurate. All the data and behind the scenes info I’ve gotten is that it’s 39 and LIU would have been 40 (42, but then 2 dropped this summer).
The usat list 41 schools, not including LIU. Take out STAC and Calvin, and 39 signed off in July to sponsor ncaa tri.
But again that’s only 1 step each year. Every program then has to actually achieve sport sponsorship, that’s the more important step for any program on a college campus (and for several programs with roster issues is very hard to then achieve).
Is it not telling that the usat list is not up.to date and accurate?
No because that has zero relevance to the ncaa. It matters nothing whether usat has accurate information or not on some website, that isn’t used in any data collection from the actual ncaa movement. It’s all based on each individual ncaa program’s data and thus that collectively will determine the success or failure of it. USAT/Tim Yount can hopefully wrangle all the programs to doing what they need to do, but at the end of the day it still comes down to each university’s stance on said program. IE- paying only part time wage, delaying when to start the sport etc.
Some intern at USAT is tasked with “updating” that list, so no I don’t care. Hell my program (NKU) wasn’t even on that list for half the season last year and we were in the middle of our 1st season. And yes we achieved sport sponsorship.
The fact that we’re this close is because of a supportive NGB, not just with words but with Money. Something Rugby doesn’t have.
Yes their support has been major factor in getting it this close to championship status. They (usat) though can only do so much. They can’t force a program to have a min coaching salary or adequate operating budget, that’s all going to be individual university led decision.
It’s also probably as hard to find competent coaches who understand recruiting and more importantly understand how to develop single sport athletes into DL triathletes. That’s basically the job for 80% of the programs.
Losing 2 strong coaches like we have in the past month hurts no doubt.
So, I hear a rumor that LIU has decided not to do Triathlon, as stated in the March USAT release. I hear Tim Yount is livid. So, seems these changes have made the minimum 40 teams not a reality?
I love when I hear folks watching some of these kids racing and are doing the breast stroke during the swim. And this is NCAA athletes? I guess if a person cannot server overhand that they could still be a NCAA Volleyball athlete?
So, when is USAT going to send out an update that LIU has not even entered and they are under 40 schools, compared to what Tim was quoted in their article?
It is just amazing, the link from USAT that has both a map and list of the colleges, are both wrong and do match each other.
With that said I am counting 39, what do you have.