College swimming help

swim4school
Sat, 28 Feb 2015 20:42:50 +0000

Can you provide just a little more information?

1. Male or female

2. Top 3 events in tapered/shaved meet

3. Do you swim club year round?

4. How many practices a weed do you swim?

5. SAT/ACT scores if available/GPA

Here’s some basic information to help you get started:

1. After identifying your top 3 events you swim, go to collegeswimming.com and review the teams and their top times in those events. If your times are not in the top 5 fastest on the team, you are not going to be interesting to a coach. If for some reason, your times are not competitive for the schools you are potentially interested in, then you should identify additional schools where your times would fall into the top 5 fastest on the team. When looking at times, make sure you are comparing your shave/taper times to the shave/taper times of the college teams. Most college teams are having conference championships right now, so it might be easier/cleaner to look at their 2014 times rather than 2015 times.

2. For college coaches to be interested in you as an athlete, they’ll want you to be able to score at conference championships. Scoring typically means making finals of the conference championships. Lots of these championships are going on right now. Look across D1, D2 and D3 to see where you might place. Those conferences will direct you to the schools that might recruit you.

3. For the colleges that you have identified in 1 and 2, then email the college coaches providing the following information: grades, SAT/ACT scores, top times in events. They will most likely ask you to complete a recruiting questionnaire. They will also want to know the dates of your championship meets so they can track your progress.

4. If you do not swim club year round, this can work for you or against you depending on your HS times. Some coaches are intrigued with generally good athletes who have not swam year round, because there is typically room for improvement. However, some coaches do not like athletes who have not swam in a club environment, because club swimming demonstrates the discipline of routine practices, managing academics and athletics, and big competitions.

5. If you are truly interested in the Ivy league, you should familiarize yourself with the term “Academic Index” and find out where you rank in that calculation. Certain AI parameters have to be met at Ivy league schools. There is quite a bit of information on the AI on this site, simply search for it.

Do some homework, choose schools that are potentially interesting, and those that might be interested in you. Start discussions very soon with coaches, as most juniors have had discussions already with coaches, and are ready for the July 1 personal discussions that will occur. Please note–you might not receive a lot of attention from college coaches for the next 3-4 weeks as they pursue conference championships and NCAAs for their current athletes. By April 1, the dust will settle, and they’ll be ready to talk to recruits again. Spend the next month getting your information together.

Best of luck.