The Dual Meet Tour is over.

This idea to fly around the country to college swimming dual meets was one that seemed not only intriguing but necessary. In a complex and rapidly evolving college athletics landscape, the future of swimming currently seems incredibly unclear. What is clear, however, is that we need to be aggressively looking for new ways to generate excitement in our sport. Full transparency, it’s also just really fun.

There was a whopping zero percent chance that this tour would have taken place without the help of some key individuals that I’d like to thank at the beginning of this recap because they deserve to be at the very top.

To Fitter & Faster, this tour quite literally wouldn’t have existed without your support. Many athletes on these pool decks have been to a swim camp at some point along the way and your influence has now carried on to their collegiate career as well. We innovated with the idea in and of itself, but then continued to innovate every step of the way throughout the tour as well. I tried to stay as present as possible throughout the tour, but I think now that I’ve been able to take a step back and look at what we accomplished from 10,000 feet, it’s safe to say we set something in motion this season. Round two next year?

To every single team that said yes to this wild idea, this wouldn’t have happened five years ago, and I’m proud to say we’re making some serious progress because of you. There wasn’t a single meet that went as smoothly and perfectly as we all anticipated it would, and that’s okay. We made mistakes, but for each mistake we made, we learned something that we can apply going forward to make meets better for fans, and when we make meets better for fans… everyone wins.

To everyone else that had their hands in this one way or another (you know who you are), thank you. This took an army, and not a single one of us came out of this with any extra money in our pockets. If anything, we came out with less. While that could seem like a failure to some, it doesn’t feel that way to the people who have seen the potential this sport has been cast away for decades.

Swimming is more than just the Olympic Games, it’s more than college swimming, and it’s more than just the competitive meets we know and love. Swimming is a life-saving skill and a sport you can make part of your daily routine your entire life.

We’re some of the hardest-working and most innovative individuals on this planet, but we need to make sure our innovation doesn’t only exist within the walls of the pool. Let’s protect this sport we all know and love by creating more opportunities for former swimmers to invest back into it.Thanks for reading, thanks for following along with this tour.

What do you think… Dual Meet Tour Season 2?