There has been a lot of discussion since Athens about foreign swimmers training in the United States. Most of them attend U.S. Universities, receive athletic scholarships, and compete at NCAA's. Some notable examples include Duje Draganja (Cal), Fred Bousquet and Kirsty Coventry (Auburn), Markus Rogan (Stanford), and the South African sprinters (Arizona). Some train in the U.S., but don't compete for a university (Inge de Bruijn). All of these athletes benefit from U.S. coaching, from training with U.S. swimmers, and in some cases, from financial support provided by U.S. entities (athletic scholarships). They all turn around and then win medals for other countries.
A couple questions: 1) What do you think about this arrangement generally? 2) Is it of benefit or detriment to U.S. swimming to have these foreign athletes training and competing here? 3) Should we be giving athletic scholarships, which are a scarce resource in swimming, to foreign athletes who will represent their own countries internationally instead of U.S.-born swimmers who will represent us internationally?
I'm sure there are other issues, but these come directly to mind.
Parents
Former Member
You've all covered pretty much everything already, but I just wanted to add from my personal experience (the only one I've got) at UC Berkeley that the foreign swimmers (I don't know if they received scholarships or not) were not only excellent swimmers but also extremely intelligent students way in the upper percentiles. I don't think CAL would have recruited them otherwise. We loved having them in the water with us, bringing with them not only different swimming and training techniques but also their home cultures and, what blew my mind, language skills!
When I saw Duje Draganja in Athens wearing a CAL swim cap for his races I thought "how cool! he's swimming for his country's team, but he's acknowledging the university where he's training!"
I can understand that seeing USA money going to foreign athletes can give you a twist in the gut. But I'm all for going international in schools, pools and boardrooms. If USA universities want to pay foreign athletes to attract them to their schools ... what are you going to do? There must be a payback for the universities, otherwise, I don't think they'd do it...
You've all covered pretty much everything already, but I just wanted to add from my personal experience (the only one I've got) at UC Berkeley that the foreign swimmers (I don't know if they received scholarships or not) were not only excellent swimmers but also extremely intelligent students way in the upper percentiles. I don't think CAL would have recruited them otherwise. We loved having them in the water with us, bringing with them not only different swimming and training techniques but also their home cultures and, what blew my mind, language skills!
When I saw Duje Draganja in Athens wearing a CAL swim cap for his races I thought "how cool! he's swimming for his country's team, but he's acknowledging the university where he's training!"
I can understand that seeing USA money going to foreign athletes can give you a twist in the gut. But I'm all for going international in schools, pools and boardrooms. If USA universities want to pay foreign athletes to attract them to their schools ... what are you going to do? There must be a payback for the universities, otherwise, I don't think they'd do it...
