Get Excited for 2013 NCSA Juniors By Reliving Top Swims from 2012 Meet!

ORLANDO, Florida, March 11. IN less than 24 hours, SwimmingWorld.TV will bring the world live streaming coverage of the National Club Swimming Association's junior national championships in Orlando, Fla., at the YMCA Aquatic Center.

This year's meet is bound to have lots of fast times on the scoreboard, thanks to the appearances of Olympian Lia Neal, rising distance star Rebecca Mann and national high school record holders Jack Conger and Kaitlyn Jones, among others. The meet will be held in short course yards, giving these swimmers one final racing opportunity in that course before the start of the long course season.

Before the 2013 edition starts, let's look back on 2012 and a few of the exciting races SwimmingWorld.TV brought you live. One of the highlights was a sub-3:00 swim in the 400-yard freestyle relay by New Trier Swim Club, using the same four swimmers that had broken the national high school record just a few weeks earlier.

That team from New Trier did their swim in the preliminaries in 2012, which was swum in short course yards, while finals was swum in long course to give more swimmers the opportunity to achieve Olympic Trials standards.

As we watched Katie Ledecky swim the 800 freestyle at the junior nationals, we knew we were seeing the future of distance swimming in front of us. But very few could predict that future was just four months away, when she would win Olympic gold. Her winning time at juniors was 8:33.48, which may now seem pedestrian to the second-fastest performer in history.

Jack Conger used the meet to make a statement to his rivals that he would be one to watch in the Olympic Trials final of the 200 backstroke in a matter of months. His time of 1:58.54 definitely sent a message to his domestic rivals, and signaled the start of great things to come later in the year.

And how about this for excitement: Rachel Bootsma swam the fastest 50-meter backstroke in the world at this meet with her winning time of 27.84. Bootsma was competing in her final junior nationals before heading to UC-Berkeley … after competing in the Olympic Games.

Be sure to watch our live stream of the 2013 NCSA junior nationals, beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday!

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