Top-Two Breaststroker in C/O 2015 Carsten Vissering Makes Early Verbal to USC

We saw Katie Ledecky become the first big verbal commitment of the women’s class of 2015 a couple of weeks ago when she chose Stanford, and now her NCAP teammate Carsten Vissering has made his call as well, according to the Washington Post.

The Georgetown Prep senior-to-be announced that he will swim for USC, which will be a huge to relief for Trojan fans a year after largely striking-out in men’s recruiting.

Vissering is the National Age Group Record holder in both the 100 yard breaststroke (52.83) and the 100 meter breaststroke (1:01.94) for the 15-16 age group. That 100 breaststroke time already makes him faster than anybody who was on USC’s roster last year, and would have been the third-best in the Pac-12 in 2014.

In other events, he’s also been 1:55.44 in the 200 breaststroke, and 1:48.1 in the 200 yard IM.

USC does have some good breaststrokers returning next season in Morten Klarskov, Sergio Lujan-Rivera, and Andrew Malone, but the latter two of those will be graduated by the time Vissering arrives on campus.

Vissering is a member of the USA Swimming Junior National Team in both the 100 and the 200 breaststroke and earned a bronze medal on the mixed medley relay at the 2013 FINA Junior World Championships.

Vissering is easily the top-ranked 100 breaststroker in the high school class of 2015, and when balanced across the two distances is even with NCAP teammate Andrew Seliskar (who has an incredible 200 time) as the top two specifically in the discipline. Seliskar probably gets the edge, just because he’s more versatile, but both will have a huge impact at the national level for their respective teams.

Vissering’s commitment will not be binding until he signs his National Letter of Intent in the fall.