Omar has an unreal amount of potential and I am excited to see what the "distance king" will do for the Aggie Men's Swimming and Diving at the end of the season.

On another note, I do not think it is fair to blame international athletes as the sole reason the grades were low in the past. It looks like they are back on track academically.

I'm flattered by the handle. You make me feel special. I assume you and anonymiss are BFF's?


Anyways, slightly off topic--

How do the coaches go about recruiting international athletes, anyways? Do they just peruse different countries' top times lists, and then just start sending out letters and see who responds? A lot of countries have piss poor websites for their swimming federations, it just seems like such a huge world, does anyone know specifically how these guys go about tracking these kids down?

I mean, obviously some of them, like Enriquez who had set Mexican National Records, or Nikita, who was a finalist at the European Juniors, but what about guys like Andres or Boris, who didn't have the big international exposure?

(BTW, one of you who are on the team should get on your SID, Andres' Bio says he's only 5'1!)

Glad to see this year's freshman class is learning the ways of TexAgs. Just try and keep it civil around here guys, we dont wanna rile up the wolverine too much. Hey, I kinda like that...now that we have 2 "goblu"s, gotta start finding some new nicknames for the nicknames. This could get interesting.

And we agreed earlier that it was a fairly even split between the internats and the domesticus that gave the Men's team APR troubles.

There is one thing about Omar that nobody has mentioned yet (I dont think). Ya, he has amazing endurance. Ya, he has an incredible amount of talent and potential. Ya, he can train as hard as anyone we've seen in a while. But I think one of the most impressive things about El Mar (see what I did there, eh?!), is that the dude is a RACER! If you watch that kid compete, the dude will race to the death. He reminds me of Duran in that aspect (thankfully with better grades). People have been comparing his times with Wilcox from Texas, and that is one of the races I am most looking forward too. The dual meet at home will be the first round, then back at home for Conference and round 2. Wilcox will certainly be the favorite, but El Mar doesnt care (or maybe even know for that matter) that hes "not supposed to beat Wilcox". Just like Israel "wasnt supposed to beat Berens" a few years ago. I bet El Mar will give ole Jackson everything he can handle come conference.

Goblu - I was told by JH that in many cases, perhaps, most, the athletes reach out to us directly on their own.

They are looking for a place to swim and THEY search for opportunities. If they have a lead (like a friend that already swims with a school) they will naturally look there.

Foreign athletes have to take a standard English competency test. There is apparently no minimum score required by the NCAA, so each school is free to set its requirements. A&M apparently requires better English than other schools - for example schools in Alabama.

I know there are guys that seek out our coaches, but Jay and Doug are very active in their international recruiting. It only takes one guy from a European country to have an "in" over there. They are constantly asking for suggestions and getting input from guys on the current team, trying to find out everything they can about potential signees. This goes for domestic as well as international. The coaches know each other from recruiting/signing, so just because we haven't had any swimmers from say, Germany, (I just picked a random country, no fact there), doesn't mean the coaches haven't tried recruiting someone from there. They could be very close with the coaches over there, and might hear about it every time there is a decent athlete from that side. Our coaches are all about finding the "Diamond in the Rough", so they are checking out plenty of international guys, some heavily recruited by top teams, and others not so much so. Checking results, talking to athletes and coaches, obviously there's no way to keep tabs on ALL international athletes who would make great NCAA athletes, but I would say our coaches do as good as anybody else in going out and finding them.