Were you a College Swimmer?

Wow. Seems like lots of people didn't like D1 swimming. I was 4 years D1 and actually liked the whole thing--training, meets and my teammates. Me too, no complaints. And just like you, I struggled a little my first two years before doing well my last two years, but all four years were fun. But there is definitely a significant attrition rate: out of the 8 people in my class, only 3 of us swam for all 4 years. I suppose contributing factors might be: -- hard classes and developing other interests that compete for limited time -- adjusting to college life (even many non-athletes REALLY struggle with this; having to practice 20 hours a week just makes it worse) -- changing environment and coaches from age-group club team to a college team -- harder to improve times in many cases, possibly after years of improving pretty much every year -- for some, the sense that you are only swimming for a scholarship, rather than for personal enjoyment I'm sure there are other reasons.

Swam for four years as a sprint BR'er at the mecca of distance/IM - Cal. I walked on, because I thought I wanted to combine academics and athletics. Bombed out of engineering school the first year, and switched to the equally rigorous political science and economics :laugh2: My parents will probably never forgive me for that (or for turning down money to go to other schools). My freshman year (82/83) we had at least 5 guys under or within 1/10th of the NCAA cut in the 100 BR (Moorhouse, Lager, Gill, Veilleux, Jacob and me). Aside from - or perhaps including - the insane yardage, etc it was one of the formative experiences of my life, and I consider most all of my teammates from over 25 years ago to be some of my best friends. GO BEARS!

Interesting thread. I like hearing everyone's college experiences. I am still annoyed that there was one year where college swimming was done in LCM.

I was 4 years at a Div I school,but that is misleading as it was Rice(then the smallest D-I school) with no scholarships in the late 60s and we weren't very good. Almost ditto, except for the smallest part, and we were Notre Dame. Disliked not being able to swim varsity the first year, as our varsity breaststrokers were bad. As a minor program, had to share pool time with everything else on campus. Sick of swimming by Senior year, as it was 13th year of swimming. Took complete 5-year break from swimming until Masters came along. Liked seeing different campuses and trip to Canada (Western Ontario U.) for meet in the middle of Winter!

College was how I got into masters. My school has a non-varsity swim club that does USMS. Very interesting! Hope USMS Club Development is reading this idea :)

The answers posting to this thread are most definitely not the norm for USMS members... Print off the poll and take it to your club coach or workout group. Then post the results up. I would venture to say that out of the 170 swimmers on our new club here in SoCal, maybe 3 or 4 max swam in college. And probably less than 25 ever swam competitively at all. Except during holiday breaks and the summer when our head coach allows any college swimmer to swim for free. They do have to join USMS and affiliate with the club. I assume this will drive up the competitive swimmer numbers in the near future.

Swam for a DIII school (Emory University) and would do it all over again. I probably never would have lasted at a DI school or any school where I was on scholarship. DIII was laid back enough so that I managed to make it through 4 years of swimming. The first two years, morning practices were "optional" which was kind of nice when I had to spend late nights in the library studying. When the college season was over in mid-March, I didn't do a swim workout until August. The month of April was when I got to be a real college student and have a real social life before hitting the books for finals in May. During the summer, I worked as a lifeguard and ran to keep in shape. I got a little burned out towards the end of my junior year, so decided to do a semester in Washington, D.C. the fall of my senior year (I was a political science major.). Hate to admit that I didn't work out too much that semester, but the time off was good. The coach let me go on the team training trip to Boca Raton in early January. I swam horrible times for the month of January, but when I tapered for the conference meet in mid-February, I hit a lifetime best in the 200 back. In some ways I think I did miss out on some of the social aspects of college, but at the same time, I made some friends for life.

I never swam age group, high school or college. I started swimming at 48 to lose weight. Did my first swim meet a year later and have been hooked ever since.

Yeah, it was really fun. In fact, I'll be meeting up with some of my college teammates and staying with them for Nationals, even though I graduated last year. And it's been great for PNA. The WWU kids have attended lots of Nationals, scored lots of points, and provided quite a few relay opportunities for us!

4 Years D1 scholarship swimmer here as well. Loved all of it. I was a solid "B" relay member :) Steadily progressed my times in college but a lot of that was due to the fact I started swimming in HS so I wasn't burnt out by the time i got to college like many of my teammates that swam since 8 years old and I had a lot of room for improvement. I was able to easily maintain well ahead of my 2.0 GPA goal as well and finished in 4.5 years.