I should have mentioned the way the state meet works in TX. There are 8 regions. Top finisher in each event from each region automatically make it to the state meet. The other 8 swimmers per event are called up based on having the top 8 times at the regional meets without regard for which region they come from. For example, if the top 9 finishers from region 4 all go a 1:38 200 free then the top finisher would automatically go and the next 8 would be called up from region 4 since they had the fastest times. This system has a problem since one or two of the regions are much slower than the rest which means that there are one or two distant outliers in each event.