The Texas A&M women’s team have gotten a huge lift at the 11th hour in their recruiting class of 2014. Late on Saturday night, the program announced two last-minute signees: one is Sarah Vinezeano from Allen, Texas, and the other, the big star, is Beryl Gastaldello from Miramas, France.
The 19-year old Gastaldello will swim for France at the European Championships in two weeks, and is a fantastic sprinter (one of her country’s best). Her long course bests:
- 50 free – 25.49
- 100 free – 55.63
- 200 free – 2:02.47
She’s also got enough fast-twich to swim the butterfly or backstroke legs of the 200 medley relay if implored to do so. That includes a 26.36 in early June in the 50 meter fly, which ranks her just outside of the top 20 in the world this year.
Harkening back to a swimmer who was a part of the revolution in College Station that led to their current string of top-10 NCAA performances, Gastaldello feels like the next coming of former Aggie All-American (and almost NCAA Record holder) Triin Aljand. Gastaldello’s times are even better than Aljand was when she came to the United States, and Gastaldello adds a very good 50 backstroke to her list as well.
Gastaldello will almost certainly be an immediate-impact swimmer for A&M at the NCAA level as a freshman.
Vinezeano comes from Allen in the northern part of the state, near the border with Oklahoma. While Allen is best known for Eagle Stadium, a $60 million, 18,000 seat high school stadium built for their football team that is probably incredible high school stadium in the country, produced the All-State swimmer Vinezeano. She’s a 7-time regional champion in Texas and was a part of two regional team champions. If we could re-rank them (and we won’t), these last two additions would probably slide them up at least a spot or two ahead of Indiana and Princeton.
Vinezeano is a 55.8 100 yard butterflier as her best event, and also brings a 24.4 in the 50 yard free and 52.0 in the 100 yard free.
The addition of Gastaldello and Vinezeano bring the Aggies’ 2014 signing class to 11 members, joining Lisa Bratton (Richland, Wash.), diver Lauren Crown (Southlake, Texas), Bethany Galat (Mishawaka, Ind.), Esther Gonzalez (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), Kristin Malone (Shorewood, Wisc.), Caitlynn Moon (DeKalb, Ill.), Laura Norman (Keller, Texas), Nancy Schuchhardt (Berlin, Germany), and Jessica Sloan (Magnolia, Texas).
Texas A&M’s women’s class, when we ranked them earlier this month, were in the #7 position.
Actually, Béryl started swimming much earlier, and she was already one of the top swimmers when she was 12, but she started to take swimming seriously at 14, going to Nice to train.
Wow ! What a great article I’m honored !!!
And surprises to see how some people are interested about me 🙂 thank you very much !!
Bravo Bobo your CIA/FBI investigationis absolutely correct. And I can tell you: she looks like her grand’mother in the sixties ;-)))
Wow! I didn’t know that!
Béryl is one of our good sprint talents.
It looks like she wanted to go to USA for a long time.
I’ve found a little article in French on the website of A&V Athletics, an agency which helps French students to find a university scholarship in USA.
http://www.avathletics.com/beryl-gastaldello-direction-texas-am/
They write that Béryl has decided to choose Texas A&M after months of search.
According to the article, Auburn, Arizona, Tennesse and Texas wanted the French sprinter as well.
Great addition for Texas A&M.
I have made some researches.
Béryl swims since she’s 14.
She trained at Nice with Fabrice Pellerin but… Read more »
As you’ve said before, the French swimmers develop a little later than in the US. You said she only started swimming at 14! Wow, it looks like A&M has got a real diamond that just needs a little polishing!
Yes.
The only question is : how will she convert her talent into the swimming in yards? She is probably used to training around 90% of the year or even more in long course since she started to swim. She has no big references in short course. It’s a bet from Texas A&M. Sometimes the transition works very well. Sometimes no. Hopefully she will continue to improve there and qualify for Rio. After the retirement of Camille Muffat we need new talents.
I think that they did finish in the top 12 classes you ranked. You previously ranked them at #7. Great class! Excited to follow them next year.