Just a few days after picking up a big transfer for his women’s team in Elizabeth Pepper, Arizona head coach Eric Hansen has landed a big one for his men’s squad as well. Reid Elliott, after one year of NCAA action, will transfer from Michigan to Arizona and begin competition in the fall of 2013 with three years of eligibility left.
“I definitely find the training style very interesting,” Elliott said of his new home. “It is very individualized and the coaches have it down to a perfect system. They focus on trying to find exactly what type of training you need to be the best swimmer you can be. I really like all the coaches and I just felt at home while I was on my trip.”
Elliott came out of Lake Travis High School in Austin as the number 18 ranked recruit by collegeswimming.com in the 2012 class, and the number four ranked recruit in the state of Texas.
He’s a classic freestyle/backstroke/butterfly guy; during his senior year of high school, he was 44.7 and 1:38.9 in the 100 and 200 yard freestyles, and was 47’s in both the 100 yard fly and 100 yard back.
He had a solid first year at Michigan that included a lifetime best in the 200 back, but his speed never really quite got back to where he was as a senior in high school (and in fairness, Michigan needed a 200 backstroker a lot more than they needed another 50 freestyler – the 200 back was the program’s weakest event, and the 50 free one of their strongest.)
At Arizona, though, he will work with Hansen and legendary speedmaster assistant Rick DeMont in a training atmosphere that includes Olympic gold medal winning 100 backstroker Matt Grevers and one of the best (if not the best) co-ed sprint group in the country in the 2012-2013 season.
Arizona’s relays are pretty well locked down, but they have a huge senior class next season including guys like Giles Smith and Mitchell Friedemann, so by the time the 2014-2015 season rolls around, Elliott has an opportunity to make a huge impact on the program.
He joins a big incoming class at Arizona that includes another transfer, Bradley Tandy; Hawaiian butterfly ace Renny Richmond; and Washington high school senior Thane Maudslien, who has a very similar event profile to Elliott (not quite as fast, but a little better in the 200 yard races.)
