Regan Smith entered the NCAA transfer portal in the middle of March but is now listed as “withdrawn.” Athletes in the portal are designated under an “active” or “withdrawn” status. Smith had been designated “active” but now is listed as “withdrawn.”
Sources close to the situation tell SwimSwam that the NCAA deemed Smith ineligible as a professional athlete.
Smith spent her freshman season in 2021-2022 with the Stanford Cardinal. As a freshman, Smith won the NCAA title in the 200 backstroke and was 2nd in the 200 fly and 3rd in the 100 back. She scored 53 individual NCAA points helping the team to a 3rd place finish.
After finishing her season, she went pro during the summer 2022. She moved to train under Bob Bowman at Arizona State University.
Bowman has since taken the job of Director of Swimming with the Texas Longhorns where Smith has continued to train with Bowman.
Smith was the biggest name to enter the portal this offseason and she did so on the second day of the portal window which opened March 13th. That window closes today. She had been marked with a “do not contact” designation.
Now, being listed as withdrawn answers any potential questions that may have been needed if Smith had decided to return to NCAA competition such as her status of being ‘pro’ as well as how many years of eligibility that she would have had left.
She most recently competed at Pro Swim-San Antonio where she won the 100 back, 200 back, and 200 fly. She also was 4th in the 100 fly. In San Antonio, Smith made it clear of her goals and desire to “show up” this summer at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Last summer, she won silver at the World Championships behind Kaylee McKeown of Australia.
So basically, she put herself in the portal so that she could talk to Bob while training with him in case she wanted to swim NCAA at Texas because she knew she wasn’t staying at ASU. Now that she knows she isn’t swimming NCAA either, she took herself out of the portal. Got it.
How does this affect her academic status? Is she enrolled at Stanford or ASU currently?
I didn’t know Regan was still a WR holder
Medley relay
Oh I totally forgot about that. Got it confused with the men’s relay which was broken in Tokyo and thought Australia had that as well
broken by the americans
Yes in the relay in 2019- when she did her 100mBK PB…….5 years ago!
WRs expire if you do them too long ago. No one even has to swim faster, sometimes people just get bored of them.
Yeah I remember now, for some reason I thought it was rebroken at the Olympics
I hope Regan Smith will capitalize and make good money in sponsorships this summer. You’d have to think this is her best opportunity to do so.
Which American swimmers will we see heavily featured in ads during the Olympics? Ledecky, Dressel, Smith, Manuel, Finke?
Already saw a Ledecky ad on YouTube today so prob her
Douglass, the Walshes, Curzan, Murphy, Jacoby, and Armstrong. Jacoby already has a commercial on TV. The Walshes are highly marketable and Curzan is as well. I am not totally sure that Manuel will make the team, either.
Manual is on fire this spring, huge bounce back. True she’ll be in tough individually, but she’s at worst right in the mix for Relay births in both 4*1 and 4*2.
Now that we have NIL, does that mean there are effectively no limitations on the TV ads Olympic athletes who still compete in the NCAA are allowed to do?
Smith and Huske as well as Ledecky have huge marketability. Curzan if she is able to make the team would be as well.
I assume swimmers have to film commercials before Olympic trials, and they get paid significantly less if they don’t make the team.
And you think Curzan will make the team?
I think that, unfortunately for Americans, the Australian women will be so dominating in Paris that opportunities for major ads features American women swimmers other than Ledecky will be rather limited.
What? You think the US is going to run national Olympic promos with Australian swimmers?
I think that Tong’s point is that Ledecky winning gold is probably the surest bet of these Olympics, so she offers companies the best return on their ad investment because you want a gold medallist shilling your product.
The other American swimmer’s listed, while very strong medal chances, are nowhere near as likely to win gold as Ledecky is. This is partly due to Australian swimmers, but I’d also include McIntosh as well.
Even if it turns out that way, they’re not going to just not have ads with American women. They’re going to promote Ledecky, Smith, Douglass, Huske and the Walshes heavily I reckon
There are other Olympic sports where American women will win gold medals, swimming isn’t the only thing in the world.
Not going to get involved in any (pointless at this stage) back n forth regarding who’s going to dominate who but I think you miss the key point. These ads are for an American market and the airing time will be the run up to Paris and during the Games, not post Games so actual performance in Paris is immaterial with regards to these particular deals.
Sure hope she makes some good money. She gave up an education at a top notch institution to go all in.
Seems like some rules about turning pro still exist. Hopefully people can stop pretending Kate Douglass might come back to Virginia after signing an agent and having performance incentives in her suit contract as well.
Look for Kate and Alex to retire after the Olympics and move on to the next phase of their lives.
Not happening homey. Alex is already committed to swimming another year in college and I am pretty certain they’ll both compete in the SC Worlds in December.
Alex has already said she is going back to UVA to win a 5th NCAA team title.
The Supreme Court has told the NCAA too there face that “amateurism” is garbage they made up for their own gain, yet we’re still doing this.
Yeah I know things are a bit more technical than that, but my the emperor has no clothes and this persistence of the nonsense of treating getting paid like a cardinal sin even though it’s how society works is plainly dumb.
Protect academics for all student-athletes. You don’t make money in high school and neither should you in college unless you turn pro and then leave school.
Come again? How exactly does telling Gretchen Walsh she can’t make some money doing a photo shoot for Sporti “protect academics” ??
People actually do make money in high school.
how does not making money protect academics
I am sure I will be downvoted by swimming crowd, but….
Not sure about “protecting academics”, but this whole thing is very unfair to “normal students” who aren’t athletes nor legacies. There are tons of athletes committing themselves to Ivy League schools or Ivy plus schools in their junior years, prior to regular students can even submit to early decisions. Many of these athletes then get scholarships (or NIL) to get paid while regular students have to pay either based on loans or parent support.
So…. What are we really telling our kids? Forget about studying hard, Ace your APs and your SATs, just swim hard, play football/basketball hard, and you’ll get to a good school and get paid.… Read more »
You’re getting downvoted because it is utter folly to think that student-athletes are going to train hard (and yes, study hard too) and sacrifice so much for years — for zero compensation at the top level of college sports. Ah, no.
Put another way? NBC doesn’t bid billions of dollars to cover a chemistry experiment.
Someone’s living in 1975
newsflash:
Hundred of millions high school and college students around the world have to work to earn money while still studying.
Makes sense
Aw that’s no fun