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 4th? Best regards, Paul Smith" Good luck with that argument. I was with you on the online courses and training with the team arguments, but training U.S. athletes is more a USA swimming issue than an NCAA issue. Obviously, the coaches and athletes are intermingled to a great extent, but definitely two separate matters. I have a lot of respect for coaches that try to uphold their commitment to USA swimming while coaching NCAA swimming, but maybe they should make the occasional exception on their teams if winning matters that much to them or the university. After seeing the results from Division II, I wonder if Division II isn't the new place for the non-elite college swimmer (bubble swimmers) and a source of scholarships. I am sure there are plenty of foreign swimmers in Division II as well, but I have to say I was surprised a bit by number of Division II programs from schools that never had programs when I was in college that fielded reasonable teams. I assume Division II will keep getting better and stronger as the depth of Division I programs diminishes. Maybe there will be a Division II Olympian someday. Tim

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 4th? Best regards, Paul Smith" Good luck with that argument. I was with you on the online courses and training with the team arguments, but training U.S. athletes is more a USA swimming issue than an NCAA issue. Obviously, the coaches and athletes are intermingled to a great extent, but definitely two separate matters. I have a lot of respect for coaches that try to uphold their commitment to USA swimming while coaching NCAA swimming, but maybe they should make the occasional exception on their teams if winning matters that much to them or the university. After seeing the results from Division II, I wonder if Division II isn't the new place for the non-elite college swimmer (bubble swimmers) and a source of scholarships. I am sure there are plenty of foreign swimmers in Division II as well, but I have to say I was surprised a bit by number of Division II programs from schools that never had programs when I was in college that fielded reasonable teams. I assume Division II will keep getting better and stronger as the depth of Division I programs diminishes. Maybe there will be a Division II Olympian someday. Tim