It's definitely quite a turnover that they've shown in the longer races...I remember threads on her talking about how laughable the 800 free relay was compared to the rest of them...and then last season, I think we were one of the few teams in the country with 5 relay A cuts (or first time in a few years we've done it, or something of that nature that was impressive because of the 800, can't remember exactly what it was.) Enriquez is definitely huge in the distance groups---dude broke all of the school records 400y or longer as a freshman.
Reminds me of what Casey HZ and Melissa Hain did on the girls side-Broke all of the distance records early, and the level of recruits there we are pulling in now have taken it to a whole new level even from there. Hopefully the guys follow the same pattern!
In terms of Troskott swimming other strokes, a lot of sprinters are just sprinters, and can do anything (Terese Alshammar is one example). I also agree that often that doesn't come until later in their careers. Troskott did swim the 50 fly at Canadian Nationals over the summer I think, so it's not completely foreign to him. Wouldn't surprise me if he's training it some. In the past, the coaches have totally scratched swimmers from individual events to rest them for relays...I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch for them to put some of these guys in 2 individuals and 5 relays instead of 3 and 4. Although we're getting more to the level of swimmer that it won't pay off to scratch individuals points-wise, they're still young enough where not stretching a Troskott into a 2nd stroke makes sense. I'd expect by his sophomore season though that the 100 butterfly will become his 3rd individual like most of the other top sprinters (Feigen, Adrian, Schneider).
I mean, the 200 medley is a whole different animal than anything else in short course. Best walls wins. If you take the swimmer with the best walls in the world, and he doesn't swim a 50 backstroke for 8 years, he will still win a 50 backstroke every time, because at the end of the day on a 50, you're only taking about...12 or 13 strokes above water? I would venture a guess that as a general rule, more matured swimmers have better walls, so I think your odds of seeing someone like a Balazs shift to backstroke (not saying he will, but as a "for example"
than Troskott.
Man, was that rambling enough? No guarantees that any of it made sense. Anyone know who on the team has the best underwaters?
