Quick Question: Is My Child Fast Enough To Swim In College?
What Are Coaches Looking For In College Swimmers? Part 2
A common question during the topic of college recruiting in any sport is “What are coaches looking for?” This can vary from sport to sport and even from coach to coach, but there are many characteristics that are heard frequently. This multi-part series will explore some of the more common qualities that coaches are looking for when recruiting swimmers. In Part 1, we covered Speed, Events, and Academics.
Sportsmanship
All coaches want team members who are good sports. They evaluate this by observing athletes at meets and by talking to their current coach. I have heard of several instances of fast swimmers not receiving offers due to their poor sportsmanship.
There are many swimmers who want to swim in college – the field is very competitive – so a coach usually has many options for swimmers to recruit. If a swimmer does not react well when he loses or does not achieve a best time, this is a red flag to a college coach. Swimmers should be able to handle disappointment by this age!
I once saw a swimmer at a big meet throw her goggles after being out touched for third place. There were several college coaches at this meet who had been actively emailing her and recruiting her. After the meet, some of these coaches quit replying to her emails and moved on to recruit other swimmers who showed better sportsmanship.
Coachable
College coaches also want swimmers who are coachable and this is one of the first questions they usually ask club coaches and/or high school coaches. They want swimmers who will listen and who will follow directions. A coach wants his team to swim fast, to score points and to win meets. A swimmer who is not interested in improving, or who already thinks he knows it all, will not be coachable.
Swimmers have to balance taking direction from their club coach when home on break and taking direction from their college coach when at school. When my son was home over Winter Break, he followed the practices given by his club coach but had to report the amount of time he practiced and his yardage to his college coach. He also had a training program to follow in the weight room from his college strength coach so he went to dryland with his club teammates but did his own program.
After swimming for a club coach for a number of years, most swimmers have a lot of trust in their training program. One swimmer went to college but did not trust his new college coach to train him to achieve his personal goals which included some high level meets. The team followed a different training style than he was used to. He stayed in daily contact with his club coach who gave him workouts to follow. Needless to say, this was not appreciated by his college coach, nor did it help him bond with his teammates. At the end of his freshman year, he transferred to another program, much to everyone’s relief.
Team Spirit
College meets are high energy with a lot of cheering. They are like high school meets on steroids!
Coaches want swimmers who will add to the team spirit and who will get along with teammates. No coach wants a swimmer who will bring drama and controversy to a team.
A swimmer who prefers to sit by herself in the corner and not cheer for her teammates, or who is just uncomfortable with a loud, cheering environment may not fit in well with some college teams. She might be happier in a small team atmosphere with quieter teammates.
Official and unofficial visits are crucial for assessing this. When recruits stay with swimmers for the weekend, they are able to get to know the teammates and to see if they think they would fit in and would enjoy spending four years with them. They can tell if there is a lot of team spirit or very little. The current college swimmers are also evaluating the recruits to see if they will fit in and if they want them on the team. The coach will usually ask the teammates, or at least the host, for their opinion of the recruit before deciding whether or not to offer him a spot on the team.
My son took an official visit to a school that looked perfect on paper in terms of academics, size, location, and conference. However, he did not click with many of the teammates. He liked his host very much, but the host did not click with the rest of the team either so he kept taking my son to hang out with his dorm friends, instead of the swim team. My son turned down their offer because he just did not think he would have fun with the team for four years.
There are so many factors for coaches to consider when recruiting swimmers. In Part 1, we covered Speed, Events, and Academics and in the next part of the series, we will discuss three more qualities that coaches consider to be important.
Michelle Lombana is committed to helping parents like her whose children want to swim in college. When she’s not working on Conference Championship Meet spreadsheets, she can be found at www.collegeswimmingguide.com.
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College Swimming: Conference Championship Meets
All my years of club swim meets, Age Group Champs, Senior Champs, and high school meets do not compare to the Conference Championship Swimming and Diving Meet I just attended. It was a real “feel good” experience as a swim parents and I am thrilled that my son is a part of it. I had been told that it would be high energy with a lot of spirit, but that did not begin to describe it. The two things that struck me were the level of enthusiasm and the sense of team.
Many teams had a decorated seating area in the bleachers with pompoms, flags, posters, and more. Each team also had an area along the outer wall where they honored the seniors. There were posters, ranging from professional action shots to homemade photo collages, in addition to quotes, pictures, and “fat head posters”. An impressive site upon entering.
The spectators were all decked out in team apparel, from t-shirts to jackets to red and white striped pants. I am not sure I saw anyone not wearing team colors over the entire four-day meet.
Before the meet, the teams cheered. I don’t mean just cheered, they CHEERED! The cheers were led by the swimmers, not the coaches, and they had creative, organized cheers with some gathering in a circle and swayed while cheering. It was amazing to watch. It was also hard to understand the words when several teams were cheering at once but the level of enthusiasm was obvious. Parents rushed to the front of the bleachers to take photos and video of the cheers – I took several myself.
In college swimming, the team captains fill a vital leadership role by inspiring all of the swimmers, sharing important information and providing encouragement. Before each session, the coaches would say a few words, then the team captains would talk to the group. The captains made a point of giving extra tips to the swimmers who were experiencing their first Conference Champs Meet.
The first events were relays and the noise level almost raised the roof on the aquatic center. The swimmers not participating in the relays were on their feet, standing together and cheering. The medal ceremonies were held immediately following each event and the team members of those medaling rushed to the podium to congratulate the swimmers and to watch.
The diving events were interspersed between the relay events and gave everyone a chance to sit down and be quiet for a few minutes. The teams with strong divers are at a definite advantage in terms of scoring the meet as the points are added together to calculate total team points. It was great to see the swimmers and divers cheering for each other and the parents hanging out together as they are truly one team.
The individual events began on the second day and the swimmers were intense about their swims but still cheering when not swimming or warming up or down. The sense of camaraderie among the swimmers was obvious as swimmers cheered for each other as they achieved best times and made finals or consoled each other if a race did not go as planned. The swimmers knew each other’s goals and were thrilled when they achieved them. One guy broke 50 seconds for the first time in the 100 Fly and the entire team rushed to hug him when he returned to the team area. Another kid had tears streaming down his face after winning a gold medal – all of his teammates knew his story and why this win was so important. I saw examples similar to these time and time again throughout the meet.
The parents cheered for all of the members of the team as they swam. They congratulated and high fived each other after good races and screamed during the close races. Many of us were hoarse at the end of each session. The level of support for each other and for all of the swimmers was impressive. By the end of the weekend, we knew so much about our new friends and their swimmers and some families were even making plans to get together in the off season.
There was a lot of analysis going on behind the scenes as the swimmers and divers calculated what they needed to accomplish in order to move into a higher position in total team points. When the team points were updated on the scoreboard, loud cheers filled the area.
In our conference, the 1st and 2nd place positions were pretty well set going into the final relays as were those at the bottom of the ranking. But the teams in the middle positions were pretty close and they all wanted to improve their position compared to last year and some hoped to medal by placing 3rd. The cheering during the relays was wild as many of the races were tight.
The Conference Championship Swimming and Diving Meet had as much spirit as a Sweet Sixteen basketball game or a football College Bowl Game. It was so much fun and I cannot wait for next year. Go team!
Michelle Lombana is committed to helping parents like herself whose children want to swim in college. When she’s not attending college swim meets, she can be found at www.collegeswimmingguide.com.
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What Are Coaches Looking For In College Swimmers? Part 1
A common question during the topic of college recruiting in any sport is “What are coaches looking for?” This can vary from sport to sport and even from coach to coach, but there are many characteristics that are heard frequently. In this multi-part series, we will explore some of the more common qualities that coaches are looking for when recruiting swimmers.
Speed
Let’s face it – coaches want to win. Their job is to coach swimmers to be fast and to score points. You would be hard pressed to find a coach who does not care how his team performs at the Conference Championship Meet. If a coach does not care about the team’s performance, it might not be a school your swimmer wants to pursue and don’t count on that coach being there for long.
The more likely your swimmer is to score points at Conference Champs, the more interested a coach will be. If a team is at the bottom of the conference, a coach will want to recruit faster swimmers in order to increase the team’s place in the conference.
Your swimmer needs to decide where he wants to fit timewise if he wants to be at the top of the team, the middle or the bottom. If he is at the top, the coach will be more interested in recruiting him, but your swimmer needs to make sure he will be able to stay challenged and motivate himself during practice every day. If he is in the middle, he has room to improve and can still contribute to the team. If he is at the bottom, he may not make the travel squad or qualify for Conference Champs his first years on the team. There is no right or wrong answer, each swimmer has to decide what is right for him.
In order to help determine where swimmers fit, College Swimming Guide members have access to spreadsheets with times required to score at Conference Championship Meets and with top 5 times per event at all college swim programs.
Events
Coaches want a well-balanced team to score in all events and they will usually try to recruit freshmen who swim the events that the graduating upperclassmen swim. One team that recruited my son had seniors graduating who consistently scored points in six events. The first three recruits who received offers could combine to cover all six of these events, thus filling the hole the coach would have otherwise had.
It all makes sense – if the fastest breaststrokers are juniors and seniors and no new breaststrokers are coming in, the team will be giving up points in breaststroke for a year or more.
Looking at the roster on the athletics web site at colleges that your swimmer is considering can help figure out whether the school us a good fit. If there is a clear need for a swimmer with your child’s specialty, that will make him a more desirable recruit. Conversely, if they have a lot of depth in your swimmer’s best events, the coach may not need him.
My son found this out the hard way…a college assistant coach was recruiting him heavily during his junior year, calling him throughout the summer before his senior year, and telling him he was one of their top recruits. My son’s times fit very well with the team, he was in the top half so he still had room to improve but could contribute to points at the Conference Championship Meet by sophomore year, if not before. We loved the school and my son was so excited until….the assistant coach left the program and the head coach told my son that they already had a lot of depth in my son’s events so they did not have a spot for him.
Academics
Coaches do not want to worry about a swimmer being ruled academically ineligible so they need to feel confident that a swimmer can earn good grades while in college. They gauge this partially on high school GPA and SAT/ACT test results and coaches will frequently ask for this information. Coaches want to recruit swimmers who can gain admittance to the college as there is no point in wasting time recruiting a student who is ultimately denied.
Teams are ranked and compared based on GPA. They want to beat the other sports at their own school and they want to beat the swim programs at other colleges. When the team GPA was released for fall semester at my son’s college, he was quite dismayed by how much the girls beat the guys!
College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) just released the list of teams that achieved a GPA of 3.0 or higher for fall 2016 semester.
We found that some schools place more emphasis on team GPA than others and those coaches tended to mention it when calling or emailing recruits. My son always asked about team GPA if it was not mentioned as it was an important factor to him when comparing swim programs.
There are so many factors for coaches to consider when recruiting swimmers. In part 2 of the series, we cover sportsmanship, being coachable and team spirit. In the next part of the series, we will discuss three more qualities that coaches consider to be important.
Michelle Lombana is committed to helping parents like her whose children want to swim in college. When she’s not working on Conference Championship Meet spreadsheets, she can be found at www.collegeswimmingguide.com.
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What Types Of College Swimming Scholarships Are Available?
When swimmers (and parents!) think of college scholarships, they typically think of swimming scholarships. However, there are actually several different types of scholarships and availability varies by college and depends on what Division the school is in. NCAA Divisions, NJCAA and NAIA have different rules regarding scholarships.
College Swimming Scholarships
The maximum number of swimming scholarships allowed per Division is listed below.
NCAA Division I women 14 men 9.9
NCAA Division II women 8.1 men 8.1
NCAA Division III no athletic scholarships
NAIA women 8 men 8
NJCAA women 15 men 15
Even though a school is allowed to offer a certain number of scholarships, they may not have enough money to fund them. Some schools choose not to offer athletic scholarships even though they are allowed to – Ivy League schools are an example of this. If a program offers the maximum number of scholarships allowed, they are “fully funded.” Swimming and Diving share scholarship money so the scholarship amounts are divided between both sports.
It is uncommon to be offered a full ride as coaches often prefer to divide up the swimming scholarships so they can offer them to a larger number of swimmers. Swimming is an “equivalency sport” so coaches may divide the scholarships between as many athletes as they wish. If they have five funded scholarships for men, they can offer a full ride to five men, or a half scholarship to ten men or a quarter scholarship to twenty men or some combination thereof.
The number of swimming scholarships available varies from year to year as they may not be balanced evenly. For example, if a school has 12 scholarships for women, they would ideally have three to offer each year. However, there may have been a year where they offered fewer scholarships, or more scholarships, so it may not be even. It will depend upon the number of scholarships being opened up by the graduating swimmers.
This information is not readily available at most schools, partially because coaches try to put together packages that include different types of scholarships to attract recruits.
Academic
Academic scholarships are dependent upon grades and vary by school. Some schools have a formula and post it on their web site. A good example is University of Alabama which makes it easy to calculate by posting the requirements on their web site. If your child has a 3.5 GPA and a 1320 (new) SAT score, she will qualify for the Collegiate Scholarship which awards $4,000 each year.
Look at where your swimmer falls in relation to average test scores. If she has a 26 ACT and the midrange is 27-30, she is unlikely to qualify for any academic scholarships. If she has a 31 ACT with the same midrange, she will be much more competitive at that school and be much more likely to qualify.
Leadership and Service
Many schools offer scholarships for leadership and service and automatically evaluate your student’s application when they apply. Two of my sons were awarded scholarships for their leadership and service activities – a very welcome surprise and a nice reward for their hard work.
Often a college coach will ask for an early read from both Admissions and Financial Aid on an athlete to be sure the student will be admitted and to see if they are likely to qualify for any scholarships. There is no point in a coach or swimmer wasting each other’s time if it is doubtful that the swimmer will be accepted.
It is important for swimmers to be involved in leadership and service activities outside of swimming to help them qualify for scholarships. This can be difficult to juggle with the rigorous schedule of a swimmer but there are some extracurricular activities that work well for swimmers.
Need-Based Financial Aid
Need-based financial aid depends on your family’s situation. In order to get an approximate idea of the amount your family and your student will be expected to contribute toward your child’s education, go to FAFSA4caster and input your personal information. It will calculate an Expected Contribution (EC) toward the annual cost of attendance. The Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) web site has more information explaining EC and other aspects of financial aid.
Coaches will usually try to find as many sources of scholarships within the school as they can if they are really interested in a swimmer. The amount of money available varies between schools and even year to year.
Most teams are made up of a combination of athletes on scholarship and not on scholarship. The majority of swimmers who do earn scholarships end up with a package that includes different types of scholarships. All athletes on the team receive the same perks in terms of athletic apparel, tutoring, study halls, and early class registration, regardless of whether they have swimming scholarships or not.
Michelle Lombana is committed to helping parents like her whose children want to swim in college. When she’s not researching scholarships for swimmers, she can be found at www.collegeswimmingguide.com.
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About College Swimming Guide
College Swimming Guide is a comprehensive guide to take you through the process of being recruited to swim in college. Beginning in high school, you and your swimmer will begin to understand the recruiting process as well as to develop a direction for your research.