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
Originally posted by Peter Cruise
how about this: if this is a really important issue then only American citizens (or legal immigrants, I guess) could score points in the meet.
So far there have been two motivations proposed for giving scholarships:
1) reward the children of taxpayers for doing well in high school swimming
2) attract the best swimmers so your team wins meets
It seems pretty clear that where scholarships are given to foreign students it is the latter motivation dominating, and if so it is clear that if foreign swimmers couldn't score points they would not be awarded scholarships, so your proposal is basically to eliminate scholarships to foreign students.
Your question goes back to whether the NCAAs should be a competition between American colleges, as they are now, or between American students. You can always calculate the results excluding foreign swimmers, but I don't think anyone would give the results very much weight.
The idea that it is a question of how to spend taxpayer money was already debunked in the article by the Ohio coach who pointed out that for the most part scholarships don't come out of taxpayer funding.
Wrt Paul's argument that men's swimming is suffering from lack of scholarships because so many are going to foreign swimmers, it seems unlikely to me that boys are deciding whether or not to pursue swimming because they expect to be edged out for scholarships by a foreign swimmer. It just doesn't sound like the kind of mindset a potential world class swimmer is going to have.
Originally posted by Peter Cruise
how about this: if this is a really important issue then only American citizens (or legal immigrants, I guess) could score points in the meet.
So far there have been two motivations proposed for giving scholarships:
1) reward the children of taxpayers for doing well in high school swimming
2) attract the best swimmers so your team wins meets
It seems pretty clear that where scholarships are given to foreign students it is the latter motivation dominating, and if so it is clear that if foreign swimmers couldn't score points they would not be awarded scholarships, so your proposal is basically to eliminate scholarships to foreign students.
Your question goes back to whether the NCAAs should be a competition between American colleges, as they are now, or between American students. You can always calculate the results excluding foreign swimmers, but I don't think anyone would give the results very much weight.
The idea that it is a question of how to spend taxpayer money was already debunked in the article by the Ohio coach who pointed out that for the most part scholarships don't come out of taxpayer funding.
Wrt Paul's argument that men's swimming is suffering from lack of scholarships because so many are going to foreign swimmers, it seems unlikely to me that boys are deciding whether or not to pursue swimming because they expect to be edged out for scholarships by a foreign swimmer. It just doesn't sound like the kind of mindset a potential world class swimmer is going to have.
