Swim recruiting questions

Athletic Recruits
81

DS19 is currently waiting on ED. He took ACTs in spring of Sophomore year.

Academics was always a top priority and then finding the right fit. DS wanted a D3 LAC. We used collegeswimming.com and ran NPCs on college websites.

We know a swimmer at a lower D1 who hardly has time to breathe. If she isn’t at practice in the pool or dryland, she’s at classes, labs, mandatory study sessions, or working the snack bar at sport events to pay for their winter training trip, while maintaining a certain GPA to keep her scholarship. Is that what your swimmer wants? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Things we did right:

DS went on 3 OVs at D3 schools by himself. He thought he didn’t care about how far away the school was located. On his first OV, there was a terror threat at one airport where they boarded the plane and left the gate early. On his second visit, his flight was delayed and he had to run to the light rail to transfer terminals to catch the bus that was taking him to campus. He applied to an LAC that doesn’t require a flight : )

What we would do differently:

What I would recommend is identifying colleges that would be a reach, match, and safety both academically AND athletically - which is easier said than done. But some D3 swim programs are getting faster, recruiting internationally, etc. and what looks like a match on paper might not be in reality.

Try not to have a dream school.

Think about whether DS would like to be a big fish in a small pond (maybe helping grow a program) or if he’s happy being a small fish in a big pond. Is your kid comfortable going from being both a star athlete and student to being neither at college?

Fill out recruiting questionnaires and contacting assistant coaches as unless you are a top recruit, no-one is going to contact you.

Make a new email account that you both can access. This isn’t necessary but I would have liked to know who was contacting DS and making sure DS was replying in a timely manner.

It is really hard for a teenager to get an accurate read on a coaches interest even if they’ve been invited on an OV. If you are a top recruit, you will know it. But if you aren’t, the coach will string your kid along, in case his top recruits go elsewhere. Others have likened it to a game of musical chairs. But I have found that it is hard for teenagers to read the nuances in what a coach is saying. DS would get off the phone and be pretty positive but when he would relay what the coach actually said, I would find it not so positive. Who knows whether that is wishful thinking on DS’s part or my experience reading between what is and isn’t said.

We are thrilled with where he has applied but it is definitely not where we started the process.

Good luck! It’s a wild ride.

82

I agree coaches are not really looking for projects but that said would not ignore time trends. Things have changed so much since I was at a top division 1 program. When I was in school our coaches would routinely take a few “projects” every year. Typically swimmers (or divers) that had all of the measurables but were coming from areas/schools without top quality coaching available, the coaches saw the potential.

Today it looks like those days are gone and you need to be a proven commodity, especially on the men’s side of the sport. Given financial and roster limitations there just is not space for the project any longer. I had an athlete that was incredibly fortunate to walk on to a top 5 program last year and he was very much a project. This was his dream school without athletics so to have the chance to walk on was the cherry on top. He loved the team, the training, etc. but when fall of this year (his soph year) rolled around he was cut. He was emerging from the “project” status and looked to be able to contribute this season but they received a last minute commitment from a recruit in his event and there was no longer the roster spot so he was cut. For him it works out as he is at his academic dream school but if I had gone simply for the sport aspect he would be miserable. Hence all of the discussion around making sure the academic fit is right because the team can all go away tomorrow.

83

A good article that is pretty relavent to our discussions: https://swimswam.com/the-ever-changing-face-of-college-recruiting/

84

^^ I just had a little panic attack reading that article! My D19 doesn’t even have all her EA acceptances yet and it seems we are already late to start the process with D21! I need a reality check. The article makes it sound like current sophomores and juniors may be getting the short end of the recruiting stick this year. D21 will not be a top recruit, but she is higher academically and athletically than her sister and I feel like I will be starting the learning curve all over again. I think the article is directed at the highest recruits, so hopefully her match schools will still have roster spots into fall of senior year.

85

wow, that article makes me feel like we were the last of an era.

We’re seeing the trends in the SwimSwam article for the superstars on my daughter’s club team, but not so much for the kids one step below. But that might be because this is the transition year, might be because we’re looking at DIII teams, and might just be the teams that my daughter has ended up interested in.

I will admit that I’m eagerly awaiting decision day in a couple of weeks and are hoping that we’re done with this process then. This has been a crazy year with all of this. Sure wish my kid could have fallen in love with a program and school that could commit more to her in the fall so this waiting period was less uncertain.

86

I truly do not believe the statement “Coaches are not looking for projects” D is 4.0 16 ap (all 5s) #1 in class 4.0 Act 1 time take 35.0 (36,36,35,33) NMF. She repetitively has gone to Us Sectionals and YMCA nationals with individual times in 50 and 100 free ( which are good for relays)…She has ZERO interest… Yes she has filled out questionnaires … Yes she contacted coaches…NO she is not an idiot on the phone( she won the state speech competition )…She is 5 feet 0" and all coaches state " Your technique is perfect, but there is no where to go"… The best she got is you can be on the team if you get into the school. She is obviously looking into NMF free schools. So sad that a 6ft lazy kid with time significantly worse time than D ( extreme grit determination and gifted) gets all the interest. In fact 3 schools told D they don’t even look if your under 5 ’ 10.

87

@RW1 I think you are misinterpreting my opinion or we are seeing different sides of the same coin. I would agree that your daughter will have a tough time garnering interest based off of the “there is no where to go” statements. If her technique is flawless and she has had high quality coaching and her times are not already at the top of the college team’s athletes her ceiling is limited when compared to someone, with the same times she has, that does not have the flawless technique. Technique changes can raise an swimmers ceiling. An athlete with good times but poor technique is not necessarily a project to a coach but a coachable athlete that can improve, there is a difference.

Recruiting is tough for timed sports as the time is what jumps out but the bigger piece is where can the athlete go in the future. Time gives perspective and I look back on my college team. One swimmer started out at a small, midwest directional as his age group times were nothing great. After a year of better coaching and stroke improvement he transferred to my top 10 team and went on to be a multiple time NCAA All-American. On the other hand, the year he transferred in we also signed a world record holder coming off of a bronze medal in the Olympics (where he lost his world record). This swimmer never improved in any event but it didn’t matter he was something like an 8 time NCAA Champion. He didn’t need to have a higher ceiling but the transfer did.

The added complexity, as I mentioned before, is the roster limitations men’s programs are under due to Title IX. There is no room to take the swimmer with no/limited upside or one that needs to drop large amounts of time because there is always someone out there that can make an immediate impact.

88

Thank-you, I get your point. None-the-less, I think its sad that drive and motivation are underappreciated. I am sure D will go to a fantastic school, join a swim team and make NCAAs. We’ll see.

89

@RW1 I think that drive and motivation are very important at some schools, and they will see the value your D brings. I know a young woman with similar stats who is a super star on her small D3 team at an elite college. In her own right she will have a tremendous future, but she is really just swimming for fun now. She is an inspiration to my D and the embodiment of “picking the right college”, but I don’t think she attracted much attention from college coaches except for the fact that she would do more than her part to keep up the team GPA.

I am not quite sure about how much women progress in the sport in college, as they are mostly done growing at 18, but men still have lots of muscle to add. Even so, kids I know have been dropped from recruiting rosters for not being quite there yet. I don’t think coaches really want to take a risk on lazy kids either. If the coach doesn’t see the right attitude on a recruiting trip, that lazy kid will get dropped too.

90

Sometimes, size matters. When my daughter was swimming at about age 7, she got up on the box and then the kid next to her did - and was twice the size! Parents at the other end (including me) were laughing because it was such a comic picture. That kid was half way down the pool before mine hit the water. Missy Franklin was in that same age group that year. She was also twice the size of mine with enormous feet. Thankfully, she was in a different club group.

My daughter played another sport in college, and size did matter. She played D2 but they sometimes played D1 teams in fall ball. Those D1 kids were big.

91

Just wanted to weigh in on the conversation on a couple of matters. First the background: my daughter swims for a top academic D3 LAC. She is a significant contributor to the team and has always made the championship team, but is not one of the absolute top stars, which is exactly where she wanted to be when looking at teams in high school. She loves her experience thus far on the team and is very happy with her choice, both academically and athletically. Her ED decision was based on academic and social “fit” first and foremost. I told her to choose a school where, if something happened and she couldn’t swim there, she would be happy. I feel she chose wisely.

She didn’t start club swimming until 7th grade, and even then only swam for a fairly relaxed swim club. She played lax, tried out crew, but ultimately decided to concentrate on swimming in 10th grade. If you had asked her in 9th grade if she were going to swim in college, she would have laughed and told you she didn’t have the times.

Do coaches take chances on developing swimmers? Interestingly, her coach spoke with her about this at her preseason meeting with him this year. In her case, things worked out well for the coach: her times started dropping dramatically junior year of high school, and have continued to drop dramatically in college. And several other coaches told us during the recruiting process that she was an attractive recruit because she had decent times yet had never trained intensely - there was definitely room to improve. But for each recruit like my daughter, there’s another recruit who never swam intensely in high school and then can’t deal with the intensity of college-level swimming. So some coaches may take this chance and others understandably won’t. In my daughter’s case he didn’t take a huge chance on her because her stats were so high she didn’t need much assistance (if any) to get through admissions.

92

As for greatest challenge? Easy - juggling even the limited D3 commitment with academics. For example, this weekend she has a three day invitational meet through Sunday evening, and on Monday has a Bio exam and an organic chemistry lab due, on Tuesday has an organic chemistry exam, and on Wednesday has a Bio project due. Crazy. It’s been a challenge being a science major and balancing all of the demands that entails with her training and meet schedules. There’s no question it has affected her academics at times, which is unfortunate. But she has gotten so much out of the swim team experience she would do it all over again. And so many members of the swim team are STEM majors that she has good company in her stress and anxiety :wink:

93

As for minimum SAT/ACT - very true that that will all be school specific. But there was one NESCAC coach who made sure she had “at least” a 2100 SAT (back in the old days - equivalent of a 1400 now) before he went further with her.

94

It wasn’t quite that bad, but my D’s schedule was similar for her first year. Spring sport, so fall practices were lighter. She put in a lot of time on her academics (8 hours of mandatory study tables). I thought it was the best thing ever! The NCAA’s gift to a parent is having them in bed at 9:30 after 2-3 hours at study tables, to go to 5:30 conditioning. In the spring, she had a lot less time because of long road trips (coach learned and didn’t schedule as many in future years).

After freshman year, she got better at time management, more confident in her classes, so had more free time.

95

@Momtothreegirls I have head the same thing about intense training. A girl from our club is a Freshman at a major D1 and the coaches really liked that she hadn’t done any serious weight training in HS. She is cutting time this season with the rigorous college training. I think this holds true for girls more so than boys. To keep up with the other boys, weight training is almost a requirement. Boys also seem to peak later than the girls, who often have their best times in 10th grade. Good for your daughter to keep dropping her junior year.

I have seen several swimmers at our club peak at age 12. They are the taller kids, usually, who haven’t had to train as hard. When the other swimmers start growing, their effort pushes them ahead of those early growers, who get frustrated. Swimming Open at age 14 is a whole lot harder than being tall at age 12. And High School is a lot different than 8th grade.

96

That brings up another good point: in our experience, the coaches wanted to hear that their female recruits had NOT done vigorous weight training. I know that was one selling point for my daughter, and also one (not that she needed one, really) for her friend who was a star recruit for one of the top swimming Ivies. Although her friend had trained vigorously in high school (and was a true star), she had never lifted. Lifting in college allowed her to continue to drop time.
In our experience at an LAC D3 swim program, the boys tend to continue to drop time in college, but the same thing is not true for the girls. Some do, whether it be because they never engaged in intense training in high school, or just that they are a natural and continuing to develop talent. Some girls plateau and just maintain their high school times, and more than I would have guessed actually never achieve their high school times in college. Perhaps this is because this is a D3 environment where some swimmers are actually training less intensely year round than they had been in high school. I don’t know. But we’ve seen this happen year after year. College is a whole new ball game with newfound independence and new anxieties and stresses. It’s all a guessing game for the coaches when they are sizing up swimmers and deciding whether they will continue to drop time. But in general, they do like to see recent progression and time drops. It shows the swimmer is still developing.

97

we were told that this new NCAA recruiting timeline will result in “spread” the talents, DIII schools/schools that don’t necessarily have the best swimming program but have better academics may attract better swimmers than before.

@iaparent
Your Olympic medalist and transfer student examples are great. I guess college coaches care more about conference points/impacts than anything else.

@Boilerjoanne
Seeing the same thing here at our club, early bloomers (mostly boys) who were stars under 12 sometimes under 14, plateaued once the late bloomers catch-up and surpass them in height. Some of them even quit swimming once the “winning halo” is gone and the early morning grind is in. Of course there are also those really late bloomers who might start to shoot up in Junior/senior year, which doesn’t suit well for this “accelerated” new NCAA timeline as they are just starting to drop times.
Size definitely matters in swimming, esp for sprinters. Which is why I think it is so important to not to focus on one sports too early.

98

@makemesmart I’m trying to understand how this new accelerated time line will affect my D21. What do you mean about D3 programs attracting better swimmers? In our college search for D19, it became obvious that good swim schools are good academic schools and she did not have the stats for admissions at many schools where she would have been an athletic “fit”. D21 will be looking at more selective schools and I’m worried about how much harder the recruiting process will be.

99

Just one point of anecdotal reference: our D3 league is getting significantly faster. Definitely includes swimmers who could easily be swimming D1. So if you’re looking at a program, assume that each recruiting class is getting faster and try to find one where your swimmer’s current times put them at the top (of course keep an eye on who is graduating and whether it will leave any “holes” in the program).

On the other hand, one thing that became readily apparent to me when we started the recruiting process is that, especially for girls, there are so many teams out there in so many difference ranges of speed and ability. If your daughter truly wants to swim, there’s likely a college swim team out there for her (your daughter might have to be a walk on though). The trick is finding one that lines up with where she wants to go.

100

@Acersaccharum I am just guessing but I think the new timeline will allow the top programs to “lock in” their recruiting class a year earlier than in the past. Once the top D1 programs lock in the trickle down starts to happen. I think with the process starting earlier those left out at the top will start looking at D3 earlier than today and will take some spots away from the walk on/roster filler swimmers that generally are at the end of the timeline today.

My feeling is the solid swimmers D1-D3 will still have spots, they just have to commit earlier and then the lower half will have limited choices on where there is a roster spot and an academic fit.

From the outside looking in I think this will be great for the D3 programs as they will have more access to fast swimmers that may have been shut out of the top D1 programs at an earlier point in the process with a better ability to sell their program. I think D3 will continue to get faster as a result.