Am I missing something here? Is Texas down to A&M, tu, TCU, and SMU? Seems the SEC has better luck than the Big 12 in keeping their programs.

It's been that way for a while now. Rice was the last one to drop 10 years ago or so.

It's remarkable how these programs had no problem staying afloat (pun intended) not all that long ago.

[This message has been edited by Look Out Below (edited 11/11/2009 4:43p).]

Very sad, and even sadder that only 3 teams in the Big 12 have men's swim teams. A lot of good high school swimmers winding up at places like Incarnate Word in San Antonio or Centenary in Shreveport.

As far as D-1 schools, I think that's right. Which are the programs with only women? UNT, Rice, UH...Am I missing any?

Trinity Univ. in San Antonio has a long standing and solid D3 swim program for both women and men. I know a few kids there.

The problem is - it is a small liberal arts school.

UH has a fine pool. But women's only.

My sons meet got me thinking about it. He had his first TAGS cut as a 10 year old and is improving fast. I know he has a long way to go but the chances of him swimming anywhere in Texas at the collegiate level are pretty slim it seems.

All those swim programs that were cut are Title IX and budget casualties.

Most of the recent cuts have a lot more to do with budget than Title IX...there are too many coward adminstrators out there using Title IX as a cop-out to turn men's sports supporters against women's sports supporters.

My daughter swims Div III in Texas. These programs are OK if you want to extend your swimming experience by 4 years and be part of a group. But they are nothing like Div I swimming.

Title IX was around a long time before a lot of these men's swimming programs started getting the boot and a number men's programs started getting the axe even before Franklin v. Gwinnitt came about to pump up the punishments for failing to comply with Title IX.

Now, Title XI does help push the focus of budget cuts towards the men, but programs were going to get cut nonetheless.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 11/13/2009 12:54a).]

They could start by cutting football scholarships. Make these athletes share scholarships like every other athlete except basketball. The sport WOULD NOT SUFFER AT ALL. Eliminate outrageous recruiting practices ($$$).

Of course it will never happen.

Thank god for the women's equestrian team at A&M or we'd probably to have cut several more mens' teams.

Swimdad,

If she swims for Incarnate Word I saw her at the Houston Invite.

Seems that UT Permian Basin, Austin College, McMurrey, and Southwestern all have a mens team.

I wonder if Tech will ever resart their program?

Those four schools are all football powerhouses though...Tech will need to improve their football program up to that level to be able to afford a swimming program.

Tech doesn't even have a women's program. I doubt they would add men's swimming before women's.

Tech spends every spare dollar they have to keep with other Div 1 teams in the big 3 - FB, BBK, and baseball.

A&M, SMU, TCU, UT-Austin

Univ. of the Incarnate Word, UT-Permian Basin

Austin College, McMurray Univ., Southwestern, Trinity Univ.


D-1 through D-III

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 12/8/2009 11:28p).]

Incarnate Word men's team is ranked #3 in the nation in D-II per Collegeswimming.com.

At the invite, I was surprised by the quality of some of their swimmers.

I still can't figure out for the life of me how D3 swimming got to be of higher quality than D2 swimming. Any theories on this? I'd guess it has to do with superior educations received from small, highly academic D-3 schools?

I think some of the D3 teams have historically been very strong in swimming - schools like Denison, Emory, and Kenyon.

Most of these kinds of schools are private, expensive, and attract highly motivated kids that prioritize academics. D3 has no athletic scholarships - so these kids have money.

I think D2 schools are more commonly tier 2 public schools (some exceptions of course).

I know/know of several of the kids that swim for UIW and Trinity. I worry that many of them chose those schools because of swimming - but are compromising their degree or academic choices. Trinity is a fine liberal arts school. But UIW has really low midpoint SAT scores. I would not let my kids go to college there.

The answer is . . . . . . . . . to make swimming more enjoyable at the age group level. This will cure all ills for swimming. We complain about swim cuts but sometimes refuse to see the real reasons. Meanwhile, the international swimmers are coming in droves while our American swim kids go to other sports (bec of lack of scholarships, etc.). Let's make swimming here in the states more enjoyable at the age group level and we'll see an increase in scholies.

Agswinagain - You are completely mistaken about a connection between age group swimming and scholarships.

There is a small issue today about boys vs. girls in age group swimming. As they age up some boys leave the sport either for other sports or other activities. USA Swimming has data to show some of this.

USA-S participation is at an all time high now because of Phelps and Beijing. It will slowly die down again until the next Olympics. None if this will change the scholarship story because the NCAA will not do anything to change this unless a federal law changes how equity is handled or college football bankrupts some athletic programs.

The foreign kids swim here because they are available and teams welcome them. Elite US kids can find a scholarship easily. Or they will turn pro. The kids that are a step below are the ones who lose because of foreign swimmers. A US kid with junior nationals cuts might get just a 1/4 scholarship at a good Div 1 school because a foreign kid gets 1/2 or more. A kid like Casey Strange shouldn't have to walk on. Some of these kids will go D2 or D3 instead.

It is still more about money and the NCAA than anything. Arizona State dropped men's swimming because of budgets. They have to save too much money for football and something had to give.

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 12/10/2009 6:40p).]

I'll stand by what I've observed for years. If USA swimming was as enjoyable (for the kids) as, let's just say, summer league or high school, there would be an increase in the interest. Of course the social groups being left out by swimming would have to be brought in.

All time high since Phelps does not mean it's where it needs to be. For example, we just made THE FIRST African American olympic medalist. If this is not an indicator of historical lack of participation in age group swimming, I don't know what is.

Once interest is increased, swimming programs across the universities would benefit. Just look at women's soccer.

USA swimming needs to make the age group swimming more attractive. This simple fact would go a long way to solving the cutting of swim programs.

[This message has been edited by AGSWINAGAIN (edited 12/10/2009 9:52p).]

#1, I don't understand your comment about women's soccer. Soccer is one of the most popular sports in America for kids, both boys and girls.

#2. I don't think dumbing down swimming is the answer, because the best swimmers are the ones that are nuts driven and want to do that crazy year-round schedule. There are many programs, actually, that are popping up now that are geared more towards the lower levels of swimmers. I don't understand why you blame USA-S for these programs. There's obviously enough of a market for them to run this way, as in most parts of the country there's more swimmers than pools. If all programs cut back, then we simply wouldn't be able to compete with the foreign swimmers, where they go to specific academies that are centered around their training.

Swimming's never going to increase it's mainstream participation potential on the boy's side above age 12 until they lose the Speedos. It's stupid and sad, but I think that's seriously the biggest issue.

Agswinagain - I don't think you can convince me. The growth of NCAA women's sports is tied to many demographic and socioeconomic factors. Title IX was a huge force all around. But you have to also add in the the growth of sports to girls over the last 20-30 years that didn't exist for our parents. I think the availibility of scholarships was a cause of much of this. Girls for the first time saw that sports could get them into college. I don't think women's soccer suddenly got more fun and the NCAA decided to pay attention.

Some USA-S data is available below:

http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/_Rainbow/Documents/2d85b87f-43cb-40dc-b26a-b33c5399fd9a/Statistics-2008.pdf

You'll see that participation continues to grow. It does not include 2009 data but it consistently shows 4-10% bumps following the Olympics. The data is interesting in many ways because it shows higher participation by girls at young ages, but about 15, girls leave the sport in greater numbers while boys stay. Anecdotal data confirms this - go to a big USA-S meet and there are clearly more girls heats in younger age groups. But as they get older, boys are equal or greater in number than girls.

What exactly do you suggest to make year round swimming more fun? Making it as fun as summer league is kind of ridiculous. My kids all started in summer league (just like 95% of competitive swimmers). Getting heat ribbons is fun when you're 8 years old. But that gets old quickly. Year-round "rec" leagues and teams exist - but that doesn't advance the sport meaningfully because these swimmers want to play, not race.

High school swimming is different - my boys definitely enjoy the team aspect a lot. But high school swim coaches in general suck - and the there is an ongoing struggle between the club coach and the high school coach. Some club coaches, like Randy Reese, despise high school swimming and essentially prohibit (or try to) their swimmers from practicing with the high school team.

High school coaching really is dreadful. I figured that out around my Sophomore year of high school.

It's too bad that USA-Swimming can't do a better job of emphasizing the team aspect. THAT would increase the draw significantly, if you ask me.

goblu - I agree about the team aspect of most USA-S teams.

I think part of the problem is that meets are long enough - and they don't want to add relays to most meets. They rarely score meets - so teams don't get compared.

Scoring meets has problems though. So often a large club like TXLA, TWST, or AAAA will score 2X the next highest team. Also the vast majority of kids won't score a single point for a team anyways if they score through 16 places.

Prelim/finals meets make things a bit more interesting. And some meets will announce by name the A final swimmers before the race, play music to pump it up, etc. But the tradeoff is an all-day event. Wears the parents and swimmers out!

I agree with Spicewood Ag. You can't make Age Group swimming "fun" like summer league swimming. If that happened, my daughter probably wouldn't like age group swimming.

As far as high school swimming, most of the H.S. swimmers on my daughter's team seem to compete with the idea that they expect to final every time. About 2 or 3 years ago, there were like 4 girls on my daughter's team from Pflugerville that pretty much dominated H.S. swimming for their team. Usually their team came in 1st or 2nd at state. So I think some of the current High Schoolers remember that.

I've been told on the H.S. level you can obviously see the difference between the club swimmers and the non-club swimmers. At least from some swim parents that I know, H.S. swimming is an opportunity to "pad the resume" to get a scholly (the common partial scholly is okay.)

Ok. I'll play. I agree wholeheartedly that USA Swimming provides the highest level of coaching that is necessary for any swimmer to excel. However, my premise stands that it needs to expand in order for problems like reductions of swim programs (UCLA men's for goodness sake) to cease.

In the link provided by Spice, I found the following:

Number of year-round athletes that have been
registered for 5 or more consecutive years – 61,511

Can someone explain this to me? In the whole US, only that number (less than Kyle field sitting) has been active for five years in the highest circle of swimming? Please tell me I'm reading it wrong.

I will continue to believe that the norm will be to cut swim programs until factors like popularity increase. We are in a different new world where the traditional sports (swimming was once one of them) will keep the scholies. Kids are and will be looking to enjoy sports. Swimming needs to step up, especially in the non-represented groups. Is swimming growth keeping up with the population and the demographics? (More registered asians than hispanics in the Houston area in 2008?)

You can ridicule summer league by mentioning the ribbons for heat winners and such, but we'll benefit more if you concentrate on the fun aspect and the psychological and social aspects that attract the kids to it. If having fun means "dumbing it down," then you are ignoring the obvious; It needs to be more fun overall, not just a few. How? THat's a new topic.

Also, when I go to an age group meet, it seems like making money for the host club takes on a very important level. I'm not saying it is not, but if you compare it to a summer league meet or hs meet, the fun comparison is interesting.

I'm not ridiculing summer league swimming. I swam it ages ago. All three of my kids swam summer league and enjoyed it. But swimmers make an important transition at some point - they decide to swim year round.

These kids for a variety of reasons decide "swimming is for me." And they'll make a go of it. The USA-S data shows a fair number drop out as they get older. But that is true of all youth sports. I can only imagine how many 10 year old kids play soccer or basketball but aren't playing at 14.

I promise you year round swimmers at a semi-serious level and above are not in the least interested in ribbons. They are not even interested in medals unless they are from the championship meets.

I will say too that if for some reason we had 25% more kids - we would have a real logistics problem with meets and pools.

Swimming has a natural selection process just like soccer kids that move to Select soccer. You get faster, achieve ever greater time standards, and qualify for ever faster meets.

As for swim clubs trying to make money - you bet they do. Swimming pools are very expensive. The new Controe ISD pool cost $14M. The Josh Davis Natatorium in SA cost $5M many years ago. Dues for year round swimmers are typically $150/month. Racing costs $7 per event. Bad club coaches make $10-20K per year. Better ones a bit more.

I am all for growth in swimming. I love the sport. I agree the sport has much to do attracting certain demographics. Cullen Jones is working hard to attract more blacks. USA-S funded a study and learned that the poor representation in the sport by blacks is a combination of things - but the surprise is that a very high percentage of black parents cannot swim themselves and do not even think about getting their kids swim lessons.

roboag - you are talking about the great group of girls Texas Gold (And Pflugerville) had for a while. One of them (Micah) swims for Auburn now.

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 12/12/2009 5:01p).]

A couple responses AGSWINAGAIN...

5 consecutive years is a LONG time. Kids don't usually get in to year-round until about age 10. Imagine they do it for 3 years, take a year off to try another sport in 8th grade, and then come back when they start highschool. They've done it then for 7.5 out of 8.5 years or whatever, but because they take that year off, they don't count in that stat. There aren't many kids in ANY sport that play non-school related sports for 5 or more consecutive years, all seasons of the year. You're ignoring that swimming is one of the few true year-round sports. Also, that means that when you're getting to highschool, if kids stick with swimming, you're asking kids to dedicate themselves to 2 practices a day. That loses a lot of USA-Swimmers who still swim year round in highschool. And you still lose a lot of kids who choose other sports. Do you often see kids who play highschool football play club basketball year-round, but not highschool basketball? Don't make the numbers sound worse than they are.

Your argument is that the only way to conserve college scholarships is to improve the raw number of swimmers who are swimming year round, even though your proposal doesn't create an increase in top-quality swimming. I don't think there's any reason to let scholarships hang around for just middle-of-the-road swimmers who don't commit to reaching their full potential. Swimming will never be on the level of football/basketball/baseball, but watering down the teams that do exist with scholarships for kids who half-a**ed it through a USS program is certainly not the way to do it.

Nobody ridiculed summer league. We were all a part of it at some point, and most of us probably enjoyed it, but it can only take you so far. It's like YMCA basketball. It's great for what it is, but it's not going to produce a whole lot of D-1 basketball players. There may be ways to improve the fun part of it without dumbing it down, but that usually requires committing MORE time, not less. Some USS teams are exploring more dual meets, but there's resistance because during the school year, parents don't want to go to a meet every weekend, or on school nights. They'd rather spend a whole weekend a month there, than half of 3 weekends a month.

During the school year, most sports only hold practices 2-or-3 days per week until highschool. Sports like swimming that rely so much on training and conditioning, that kind of attendance won't cut it.

USA-Swimming is doing a commendable job reaching out to minorities. Unfortunately, the resistance is more of a cultural machismo rather than anything USA-Swimming is doing wrong. Swimming is viewed as a feminine sport in many cultures (including the hispanics). I have a few theories on why. #1, it's not something that can be done inexpensively in low-income, minority communities, or even in more affluent communities where there's not a big demand for it(pools are expensive, and parents don't know how to coach it). This gives it the impression of being a "country-club sport", which it doesn't need to be, and it never gains a foothold in certain minority communities. Pools also take up a lot of room, which is at a premium in urban areas (not many inner-city golf courses either!) Furthermore, as I mentioned above, "speedos" are given such a negative stigma, that many cultures simply will not wear them. Heck, even in the majority (read: white bible-thumpers) here in Texas, Speedos are shunned. I was at a summer league meet in an affluent Houston suburb this Summer, and our opponents team president threatened to start disqualifying our 15-18s for wearing regular speedos instead of jammers, and the compromise was that they had to have shorts and put them back on before IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the pool. Jammers are improving this idea, but they're still awfully tight.

And with your complaint about being "money makers," you've opened a whole other issue that makes it sound like you have some bitterness towards USA Swimming, like your kid didn't make the competitive squad he or she wanted. Reasons USA-Swimming meets have to be more oriented towards money-making: Indoor pools are MUCH more expensive to build, rent, maintain, and fill in day-time hours than are outdoor pools, which are often subsidized by neighborhood dues. Year-round swim coaches are a whole lot more expensive. Summer-league team staffs are populated by high-school kids, college kids home from school, teachers who swam when they were younger and need summer work, and highschool coaches who don't necessarily have the greatest expertise. For USA-Swimming to make sure that they can can attract the coaching talent that the year-round swimmers who want to reach their potential demand need to pay a lot more than summer-league coaches make. People who have the ability to be good top-level USA-S coaches also have the ability to be top-level something else, and therefore won't work for 20,000 a year. Summer-league swimmers also have a much smaller coach:swimmer ratio (Maybe 15-1) versus summer league that runs closer to 40-1.

In summation, if you want to start a year-round team that's centered around summer-league ideals, go for it. Those kids won't do anything to increase the number of D-1 scholarships, and they'll get blown away at every single meet that they go to. For every kid you produce that wants to continue swimming in college at the D-1 level, there will be 100 under the current system who are significantly better but can't get scholarship money and don't want to walk on.

I've got a story that might illustrate what both Spicewood Ag and gobluwolverine are talking about.

My daughter swam summer league for 3 years. We put her in year around swimming b/c the summer league coach strongly recommended it to us & said my daughter could be good at swimming. Also, some swim parents on the summer league team had their young son in year around swimming in the fall & spring, and encouraged us also.

So we put our daughter in one short course season the 1st year then back to summer league where she dominated. Anyway, there were two African American swimmers (brothers) that always dominated summer league but didn't swim year around - never did. I'm talking they were swimming the 50 Free in the mid 24's in the 13-14 age group at the time.

We talked with the Dad and encouraged him to put them in year around swimming and that they could be very good. I mean everyone saw the results my daughter got from just 8 months of year around swimming.

The Dad's response was that his boys didn't want to swim year around, they wanted to play football. Oh, I should mention that the boys were about 5'7" at the most. Both parents were under 5'9". The Dad knew that his sons would not be "football size". I think the Dad knew that they were better swimmers than FB players. Anyway, that's an example for you.

Spicewood Ag: We saw Micah when she was home for Thanksgiving break. Unfortunately due to a company Christmas party, I was unable to go to the Texas Invite that had Auburn, t.u., AZ & some other schools. I saw that Micah won the 200 Breast. It would not surprise me if she makes the Olympic Team in 2012. For Real!

A short summary of the USA-S study of African Americans and swimming:

https://swimfoundation.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=281

Agswinagain - what do you suggest USA-S do to make swimming more fun?

SpicewoodAG: Your link was very interesting reading.

I think even with USAS efforts with Make a Splash, there are still some other factors that effect getting more diversity in swimming. For example, just the logistics of getting the swimmer to practice. The closest club team may be some distance away from a home. A swimmer would have to rely on someone getting them to practice. Heck, on my daughter's team there are parents car-pooling all the time. And whether it's a single parent family or both parents working, trying to figure out logistics could be overwhelming for some of them.

Also, regardless of ethnic background, there are a lot of people that simply either do not know about USAS, or they don't want to spare the monthly expense or the practice time.

I work with Teens at church & I see a lot who are just not involved in anything where they can have an opportunity to find out what they're good at. And some of the parents, just b/c of "life" are not in the mind to put their kids in anything. So that's just the state of society as a whole which I think also has an impact on numbers in USAS.

Someone in the swim community needs to look at hockey. It is also an expnsive sport that requires expensive facilities that are costly to maintain. Even in Texas more new rinks are being built but most new pools are not pools but water parks. Schools should be building pools not jsut for competition, but to teach kids how to swim. They life they save could be their own.