Men's NCAAs 2009

The current issue of the ASCA editorial by John Leonard just happens to be about saving college swimming. Below is the email I sent him today; "John, I enjoyed your article’ “Preserve, Protect and Expand Collegiate Swimming” …however I found it interesting that no mention of foreign swimmers on college teams was mentioned. If there truly is an organization being formed by the ASCA, CSCAA & USA Swimming to work on this effort can they truly avoid a discussion about the impact of allowing the limited (and declining) resources and opportunities to swim at the college level to be spent on training other countries athletes? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having colleges recruit and train foreign athletes…to a point…I enjoyed the friendships and increased caliber of training/competition of that at while I was at UCSB. My point however is that if you and others believe that “The prospect of swimming in college is a major draw to keep high school swimmers in our sport and progressing” than what message are we sending these kids when they are on the bubble of being good enough to get a scholarship but see instead that it goes to a foreign athlete? Honestly I’m surprised no one has proposed a cap of “X” percentage of foreign swimmers/scholarships per team…or is it really win at any cost? Finally I’m also wondering what the thoughts of those who just watched the NCAA’s on TV/the Internet recently were seeing/hearing chants of “USA, USA” after the awards ceremony for the 400 free relay where Texas breaks the AR and takes 2nd? Best regards, Paul Smith"

The current issue of the ASCA editorial by John Leonard just happens to be about saving college swimming. Below is the email I sent him today; "John, I enjoyed your article’ “Preserve, Protect and Expand Collegiate Swimming” …however I found it interesting that no mention of foreign swimmers on college teams was mentioned. If there truly is an organization being formed by the ASCA, CSCAA & USA Swimming to work on this effort can they truly avoid a discussion about the impact of allowing the limited (and declining) resources and opportunities to swim at the college level to be spent on training other countries athletes? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having colleges recruit and train foreign athletes…to a point…I enjoyed the friendships and increased caliber of training/competition of that at while I was at UCSB. My point however is that if you and others believe that “The prospect of swimming in college is a major draw to keep high school swimmers in our sport and progressing” than what message are we sending these kids when they are on the bubble of being good enough to get a scholarship but see instead that it goes to a foreign athlete? Honestly I’m surprised no one has proposed a cap of “X” percentage of foreign swimmers/scholarships per team…or is it really win at any cost? Finally I’m also wondering what the thoughts of those who just watched the NCAA’s on TV/the Internet recently were seeing/hearing chants of “USA, USA” after the awards ceremony for the 400 free relay where Texas breaks the AR and takes 2nd? Best regards, Paul Smith"