photo by: John McCabe

Wheeling Park High School’s Luana Fernandez competes Wednesday in the 200 Individual Medley during the Northern Panhandle Invitational in November.

WELLSBURG – With a new year comes changes.

That applies to the OVAC Bill Brubaker Swimming Championships that begin Friday and continue Saturday inside the Brooke County Wellness Center at Brooke High School.

Action starts at 5:30 p.m. on Friday and at noon on Saturday.

The meet, which until a few years ago had been held just on a Saturday until moving to a two-day event, with small schools one day and big schools the other, this year will see half the events on Friday and the remainder on Saturday. All schools will compete each day.

“Basically, we’ve taken half of the events and will swim them on Friday and then swim the other half on Saturday,” OVAC Executive Director Dirk Decoy said Wednesday afternoon. “What we wanted to do was take all the best swimmers from each class and put them in the pool at the same time. Now we get to do that. It makes it more of a championship meet.”

That’s how the meet ran on the full Saturday event until it was decided to split it between big schools and small schools.

When asked about team scoring, Decoy cited the annual OVAC Cal Giffin Track and Field Championships.

“Everyone competes against each other but we still have the team scores broken down by classes,” Decoy added. Those divisions – both boys and girls – are Class 1A-3A, Class 4A and Class 5A.

Events 1 through 10 on Friday will be the boys and girls 200 Yard Medley Relay; 200 Yard Freestyle; 200 Yard Individual Medley; 50 Yard Freestyle and 100 Yard Butterfly, while Saturday will have events 11-22 – 100 Yard Freestyle, 500 Yard Freestyle, 200 Yard Freestyle Relay, 100 Yard Backstroke, 100 Yard Breaststroke and 400 Yard Freestyle Relay.

Timed finals in relays and top 30 and 2 alternate qualifiers in individual events.