<p>Daughter is a rising senior. She had a great week at sectionals this week. She got a junior and bonus cut in one of her strokes. She is supposed to be keeping coahces updated on times, etc so has some pretty nice stuff to email out next week. Does anyone with swimmers know if college coaches care that much really about long course drops? Hoping it might impove the interest level of a few coaches. Wonder though if they only care about short course times?</p>
<p>Coaches will be interested in LCM times, especially if they show significant time drops and/or national cut times. One of the biggest concerns of coaches is that their swimmers (incoming and returning) take is easy over the summer and show up on campus out of swim shape. During our son’s recruiting, we had more than one coach lament the fact that depending on the high school swim calendar, they had swimmers arrive on campus in the fall after being away from structured training and/or meets for >6 months.</p>
<p>Yes they do care about LC times! If she has a recruiting page, be sure to keep it updated with her new best times, and be sure she initiates contact with the coaches at schools she is interested in attending and keeps them updated.</p>
<p>Personally I am always MORE impressed with those who can continue to drop time even in the long course meets. My daughter’s short course times have always been comparatively much better than her LC times … so definitely update them; especially now that the season for official visit invites is upon us! Congrats to your daughter.</p>
<p>So we sent off some emails with her updates etc. Most responded positively really within a few hours. Two actually said they were at the meet and saw her swim. She won all of her heats the days they were they so that is good! Her dream school said they could not activitly recruit her at this time but they feel she would make a nice addition to the team. She then flat out asked if that meant if she got in on her own she could swim and he said yes. She was thrilled with that answer as she never thought she was fast enough to be recruited there and was going to try on academics alone anyway. Its a long shot but I tell her it is a long shot for everyone who applies.</p>
<p>Good luck to her! I have always felt (after watching ten years of training take its toll on everything else in my daughter’s life!) that it’s best to get into the school on your own merits; that way you’re swimming because you want to and not because you have to. We’re very happy with the way things worked out for our daughter, who will be a freshman in the fall.</p>