The fall signing period began today. We announced several fall signees for bball, golf, and softball.

Any swimmers or divers? I know some kids who have been actively recruited by all sorts of schools so the activity is high.

I know the guys had a whole bunch of recruits come visit early in the fall, which is good considering the numbers in the fall are usually smaller. The way they do it is they bring the "big guns" in on trips during the fall, and bring the potential "walk ons" (remember to think of that term loosely) in the spring. In the past they have mostly banked on developing the less highly recruited guys (always a crucial part of the team, no matter how you spin it), so its nice to see more guys coming in during the fall who could have more of an immediate impact. Thats definitely a change in the culture of the program from the way it has been in the past, and is a good thing to see. Let's hope they can bring some of those higher recruits in for next year!

I know Jonathan Edwards signed with Stanford, which was a bit of a surprise to me (always thought he would end up being and Eddie project in Austin). He did take a trip to A&M though, which was also good to see. even though he didnt land with the Ags its still nice to see the local studs taking trips, and in the fall at that.

Both teams gave out a lot of $$ last year so I wouldn't expect quite the same haul. I've heard both teams did have five star kids in for visits though.

It appears as if Stanford has cock-blocked the girls' Canadian pipeline a little bit which is disappointing. The Cardinal grabbed two huge talents out of there in the last year. We do still have a lot of good young ones though in Chernoff, Miller, Potvin, and Simpson so all is not lost.

I heard Lerew had a commit from a big-time American girl (which we will need as this is Jaele's final year). Haven't heard anything about actual signees yet -- swimming or diving -- though.

While more divers are always nice, given that they get more events per roster spot, the way that Janie has developed will help cushion the blow of losing Jaele a lot. Lerew has really turned A&M into one of "those" programs that gets a ton of points in diving...it's good to be one of those programs because you always outperform what everyone thinks you're going to...everyone forgets to talk about the divers!

Besides Spice, it's wishful thinking to hope that we'll hear about the Ag recruits anytime before August. ;-). JK guys...

I had heard that Edwards was on the fast track to Austin too, but I think he's pretty good at that book learnin' too, and when Stanford comes calling, I imagine it's really hard to turn down if you're that type of kid.

I think the guys' real target for this year should be Cooper Robinson out of Houston. 49.00 100 back in textile already...Not too shabby. Backstroke is probably where we're going to need the most help down the line. Heard he was on campus recently as well. Texas might be eyeing him as well though, as Texas didn't land any of the top 4 in-state kids.

And WTF, I wish Harvard would stop poaching all of the top Texas kids...3 out of the top 11 from 2011...breaststroke state champ last year.

Heard the girls have a commit from Kelli Benjamin who went 23.07 and 50.19 to win the Arizona state meet over the weekend. This will be just what the doctor ordered with losing Maria and us needing to build back up our sprint free unit. I'd love for us to get two more kids like this:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/25603.asp?q=Arizona-Division-I-5A-State-Championships

Other A&M recruits that have signed so far:

Samantha Bosma-Number 4 recruit out of Georgia. 58.0 LC 100 free in textile, 51.00 yards in rubber.

Emily Neubert from Texas Gold, 56.0 100 fly, 21.6 100 free (both in textile).

I don't think Boys have anyone with their names on the dotted lines yet.

Heres some info on the diver I mentioned earlier. She's legit. There's another interesting name in the first story as well...

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_highschool_varsity/2010/08/02/west-orange-diver-cherie-hammond-punches-ticket-for-worlds/

http://www.wotimes.com/articles/2009/10/21/news/sports/sports02.txt

Wowww...she's big time. Came from Lerew's old club...could be a nice pipeline to College Station based on what that first article says. Looks like the Aggie women are going to be set on diving for a long time to come...

Do you guys know if A&M recruited Maddie Locus (Fort Bend Dulles)? 23.18 50 free, 50.17 100 last year. Her dad is an Ag. Outstanding freestyler.

I don't know if we went after her, but she signed with Georgia. Didn't realize her Dad was an Ag, makes that a tough loss. Sounds like she would've really hit the spots for the Ags.

That's a shame. Locus swam in Austin for many years. She has an incredible "easy" sprint freestyle stroke. Kind of like a female Jimmy Feigen.

Stanford picks up the big prize of the class, David Nolan.

For those keeping score, that makes the tally Stanford 2, Texas 0.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_highschool_varsity/2010/11/13/class-3a-swimming-and-diving-meet-west-oranges-cherie-hammond-captures-fourth-state-diving-title/

Keith Murphy to t.u.

that one hurts

Trip Cooper goes to Texas. Cooper Robinson goes to TCU??? Connor Nolan goes to Missouri????

Only two top-10 in staters left on the board, #5 Ben Anderson (who swam for LA, good luck) and #10 Kevin Burns. Looks like we're going to be looking internationally again...this was a strong in-state class, too bad we couldn't grab any of those top guys.

I suppose we had too little scholarship money to give. 9.9 doesn't go very far and when international guys get big chunks of it, some of these fast kids need more than books. Texas can get them for free almost, but we can't.

No one good should swim for TCU.

Blastoff-
Is there a list of the top 10 recruits in Texas or is that just your opinion? If so could you post a link, haven't heard some of these names before and wanted to get back in the loop

I'm going off of the CollegeSwimming.com recruiting lists, which while not dead-on, are fairly objective and usually pretty accurate (especially in the class that is currently in signing.)

http://www.collegeswimming.com/swimmer/114709/

Jacob Ritter probably belongs higher in the rankings, as he's an outstanding distance freestyler, but is not as solid in the shorter races (Collegeswimming uses top 5 events to determine rankings I believe.

quote:

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9.9 doesn't go very far

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It goes even less far when some of it gets taken away because of previous years' academic short-comings...

Isn't there some kind of foreign athlete adjustment to the NCAA grading scale?

Not that I'm aware of.

I'd heard we might have taken a hit on the GPR deal (I think Byrne put it in his Weekly at one point) but I wouldn't think that would affect next year's scholarship numbers. I was under the assumption we'd worked all those issues out of the system already and the punishment had already been incurred. I could be wrong though.

Scholarship question - do you think coaches routinely make a multi-year commitment to athletes or do they make clear it is a year-by-year thing?

I heard that some S&D athletes ask for, and get, a five year commitment. I don't see how that is possible.

In normal circumstances, once a coach offers a scholarship I think the athlete is -- in good faith -- locked in for that until they graduate unless A) he/she gets a lot better relative to the team's success and the coach feels like giving them more or B) athlete completely craps out and understands that they are killing the team by eating up money they haven't deserved relative to others on the team/recruits that could better or are bettering the team.

With all that said, there have been coaching staffs who will give kids what they want to get them on campus and then take some away the first chance they get so they can give money to the new crop of recruits **cough** Auburn **cough**. Most kids won't leave when that happens to them and those coaches bank on that.

Ultimately though, a scholarship is renewable in its entirety each year. Nothing is guaranteed longer than a year.

that's basically correct LOB
there's of course a whole range of "dumb-ass" violations that enable a coach/institution to strip a kid of their scholarship.(of course this doesn't apply to a person like C.N. in a diff. sport....ha ha ha)

it's important that we work with kids in good faith...and produce superior alumni.....

I recently saw on the women's bball board that the program had just switched to a system where the athletes had to earn their scholarship every year, much like the men's program does. In that setting, it was considered a sign of the quality of the program that you have to earn it every year.

Which is odd, because in general, swimmers have an easier time transferring and being immediately eligible somewhere else.

At any rate, yes, what they've all said, coaches can find thousands of reasons to pull scholarships. I knew a girl who was at an unnamed school (D2), where she was by far the best diver the school had (the team didn't even have a diving coach), and the coach tried to cut her scholarship for missing one practice to go home for a weekend or something. The second she looked into transfering, the coach did a complete 180 and gave her more money.

It just depends on the coaching staff. Basketball is apples and oranges compared to swimming because in basketball it's a full ride or nothing whereas in swimming you can give percentages of a full and not the whole thing.

That said, I've seen many a crappy basketball player play a grand total of 30 minutes for the entire season and be on a full and be back the next year so I think that kind of talk of earn-it-or-lose-it is a little machisimo but whatever. There's no way all the full rides in basketball are in the playing rotation -- in pretty much any program in the country. I'm guessing those type of kids are valuable to them in practice to be continually renewed.

So, if we can be un-politically correct for a minute, how do you guys feel about so many foreign swimmers on the A&M team these days? For the longest time, that was a huge sore spot with the Auburn program (though they've gone away from it recently). Other programs like Baylor tennis hear similar criticisms. Is A&M swimming going to be in that group soon too?

Personally, it doesn't bother me one bit. Whatever it takes to raise the prestige of the program (within the rules) is ok with me. But I was never good enough to have to worry about it, and I've heard that it's been a big turnoff to a lot of recruits. Did you guys have a beef with it when Auburn did it the same way?

Thoughts?

[This message has been edited by gobluwolverine (edited 11/17/2010 7:31p).]

The NCAA gives championships for winning, not for recruiting Americans. Any kid that doesn't come here because they are turned off by foreigners is too small-minded to deserve a spot on our teams anyway. We don't need that kind of trash in our program.

I'm sure our staffs would prefer to have as many good Americans on our teams as possible. It would certainly save us a lot of money on recruiting travel, paperwork and extra headaches on getting kids admitted, etc. etc. But that's not reality. Reality is -- especially on the men's side -- that the top kids go to Stanford, Texas, Cal, Auburn et. al. To be competitive with them you have to find athletes anywhere you can. Our coaches have done a terrific job of that and have kept us nationally competitive because of it.

! well said, next topic

VERY well said LOB, very well said

Hmmmm.....I have huge respect for what Jay and Doug have done with their athletes. But I'll admit I am disappointed that we cannot convince more elite, or near elite Texas and US-based swimmers and divers to come to Texas A&M.

I'm not convinced that a roster with many international kids is a turn off to Texas kids. My son swam with kids from Germany, Hungary, Panama, etc. and didn't care. He wanted to swim fast.

I think the bigger problem for A&M is that we just don't know how to break the addiction to foreign kids. They cost us more scholarship per kid than if we had Texans, many who probably would be happy with a 1/4 scholarship. We know Eddie convinces hoards of 1:38 200 free swimmers to swim for books. But we don't know how to do that. Who was the last 5A state champion to swim for us? Casey Strange?

I admit I'd rather A&M finish top 10 with international swimmers than top 20 without. But somehow we need to find a way to take our proven success developing swimmers to get more US-based athletes to choose us.

It has nothing to do with an 'addiction' to foreign kids. Trust me -- the coaches recruit the Americans kids just as hard as the foreign ones. The foreign kids choose to come here; the ones you are talking about, almost as a rule, don't. It's really as simple as that.

The only troubling thing is that those 1:38 freestylers would rather swim for free for Eddie while never making the Big 12 scoring team, sweating out whether they make NCAA's even though they have been invited, etc. etc. than come here and do all those things quite easily while getting scholarship money to boot. THAT is what what make no sense.

Of course we'd all like to have more American/Texas kids for the reasons I already mentioned in my previous post but simply wishing for it doesn't make it happen. The coaches are putting their best foot forward with every kid they bring in. If it was something easy to do, it would have already happened a long, long time ago. The issue is not what we aren't doing; it's why a kid and his family would pay out of their own pocket to take greater risks somewhere else when he could get paid more to have a better chance at accomplishing those things here.

With Lerew here, I think we may start getting some of those wishes on the diving side. We'll see.

[This message has been edited by Look Out Below (edited 11/18/2010 4:20p).]

LOB - by addicted I didn't mean that was the only athletes we recruit. But it is a lot of work to get them - they have to take English proficiency tests, they have more paperwork, we don't even meet all of them face to face, do we?

I trust that the coaches DO put their best effort in domestic kids. But somehow we need to get better. I still think Byrne doesn't help much. A&M still doesn't market swimming enough. Somehow hosting NCAAs hasn't helped us much.

I don't see Jay and Doug's names featured anywhere in swimming news, websites, clinics, etc. I haven't seen their faces anywhere public. We do see Bultman.

Generally, yes the coaches do meet most of the foreign kids face to face while recruiting them. I think it makes a big difference to a kid to have an American coach make that kind of effort and it seems to have paid off for us.

I know the men's coaches do attend and speak at clinics, particularly at the state level. I don't think that Bultman does any more of that kind of thing than the men's coaches do really. There seems to be a little more women's stuff in the national swimming media but I think that comes with the success they've had.

I'll let others speak on your middle paragraph.

the domestic recruiting will get better as the guys see more success. its already very evident from the guys they are bringin on trips this year, that them continuing to be in a position to battle for a top 10 spot these past few years has helped tremendously. its not something that happens overnight, it takes time to build the program to a level of success where we can bring in the top domestic guys, in addition to some foreign talents as well.

Keep in mind, when bultman started he was rebuilding a program from the dirt. he took a few years of solid domestic recruits to get back to respectability, and then his first monster recruiting class was highlighted by two HUGE international recruits (triin and julia), followed by Alia the next year. Those few international recruits (combined with some studly domestics also, granted) helped the girls rise to the top. Even now he is still using the canadian pipeline. I dont want this to come out wrong, but canadians are still technically foreign recruits. It takes a good mix of foreign and domestic recruits in most cases to build a top notch program (some exceptions of course), and the guys are building that way using a little bit higher percentage of international guys. Weve still seen our share of domestic talent too lets not forget. Gardner, Chambless, Raiford, Strange, Bergstrom, Dalton to name a few domestic NCAA point scorers (sorry to anyone i left off that list).

Let's stick with them, I really do think that with the success we have seen the past few years, recruits are starting to realize that A&M is a serious program for an NCAA top 10 finish, and its gonna draw a lot more looks from recruits that would have otherwise blown us off. once we get to that level, i think you will see more kids willing to take less money to be a part of a successful program. keep in mind, although we have the longest string of top 20/25 finishes of any team/sport in the country, many kids (especially the really good ones), dont think of that as a "top notch" program. You throw a couple 11-12-13-14 finishes in there and it catches peoples attention. Keep moving up and who knows what could happen. a 7th place finish this year would shock a lot of people, and id love to see the recruits coming on trips next year.

I promise, those coaches are doing everything they can recruiting wise to bring in the top notch guys, whether foreign or domestic.

That being said, as a swimmer I would have LOVED to have had more americans on the team, and to have been able to give even just a little bit of money to some of the local talent to get them on board. And thats not a knock on any foreigners by any means. Some of the best teammates/friends I ever had were from other countries. But you have to keep an open mind about how the coaches are doing things, and find a different way to look at it.

As for Byrne, I really dont think he does any more or less for swimming than he does for any of the other non-revenue sports. There used to be all the speculation of him cutting the program, and it being a turnoff to recruits not knowing if the program would be around. but with where the guys have been the past few years, i think people have realized that hed be nuts to do that, and that the mens swim team isnt going anywhere. i dont think that excuse really applies anymore, even though Im sure other coaches sure try and use it against us.


Whew, I havent written a post that long in a while! not being a college student/athlete any more has kept me busy...is it supposed to be like that? haha oh well. Just some semi-inside input and food for thought for everyone.