Earlier today, USA Swimming announced its representatives for next summer’s World University Games in Gwangju, Korea. We took the opportunity to analyze the roster, breaking it up by individual schools and putting together some cool visual looks at the breakdown.
The California Golden Bears were the runaway leaders in placing swimmers on the World University Games team, with 9 representatives heading to South Korea next summer. That includes four women and five men. We’ve got the full breakdowns below, but if you’re more of a text-oriented type, here are the team leaders:
- Cal 9 (4 women, 5 men)
- Texas 5 (1 woman, 4 men)
- Stanford 4 (3 women, 1 man)
- Georgia 4 (3 women, 1 man)
The combined dominance of Cal and Stanford meant that the Pac-12 conference also led the way in terms of overall selections with 17. That’s nearly double the next-highest conferences, the Big Ten and SEC (both of which had 9 swimmers on the squad).
These numbers do include swimmers of varying NCAA statuses. Incoming freshmen as of next summer’s meet are eligible to compete, and we included them with the program to which they’ve given a verbal commitment. Only one World University Games athlete is yet uncommitted, and that’s California sprint freestyler Abbey Weitzeil.
There are several college graduates on the roster as well – swimmers who graduated last spring were eligible to make the team this summer. That accounts for 6 of the 46 athletes on the team.
Below are a set of interactive graphs to break down the roster further. Each of the three tabs at the top represents a different breakdown. Here’s a quick explanation of what each graph shows and how to use it:
#1: Full team, both genders, split by school and conference
This combines both genders and shows all 20 programs with a representative. Click on one of the conference bubbles at the bottom to see only the teams within that conference side-by-side. Click on the same bubble again to de-select it and return to the full view.
You can also click on any conference from the “Conference” legend on the left to have that conference’s schools highlighted.
#2: Teams by gender, split by school and conference
This graph divides the men’s and women’s teams. Toggle between the two genders with the drop-down menu in the top, middle.
Once again, you can click the conference bubbles at the bottom to see only that conference’s programs. Click the same bubble again to de-select it and return to the full view.
#3: Full athlete roster and enrollment/graduation status
The final tab gives us a look at how many of these athletes were on the college’s official roster when they qualified for the World University Games team. Our classifications are as of this August, since the WUGs team was selected at U.S. Nationals in early August. So any current freshmen are listed as “commits,” as that’s what they were when they qualified.
Similarly, any athlete who finished up their collegiate eligibility last spring is classified as “grad,” since they were technically not a current college swimmer when they qualified.
Click a section of the top left pie chart to see all the athletes in that category. You can de-select that status by clicking the same pie chart segment again.
Once again, you can toggle between genders with the drop-down menu on the left side. That changes the bottom pie chart, which focuses on each specific gender.
You can also view these graphs in their own tab by following this link.
