Fitter and Faster Swim Clinics is the proud sponsor of SwimSwam’s College Recruiting Channel and all commitment news. For many, swimming in college is a lifelong dream that is pursued with dedication and determination. Fitter and Faster is proud to honor these athletes and those who supported them on their journey.
The top recruit in the high school class of 2021 Anthony Grimm has verbally committed to the University of Texas. Grimm, who is from Fairfax, Virginia, swims for the Mason Makos Swim Team and Oakton High School.
Grimm is similar to another Mid-Atlantic swimmer who swam for Texas, Jack Conger, in that Grimm has a ton of options for where to specialize as his career develops. He has no real weakness, and is elite-class in all 4 strokes. He’s the fastest swimmer int he class in the 50 free, 100 back, and 100 breast.
Best Times in Yards:
- 50 free – 19.67 (19.28 relay split)
- 100 free – 47.59
- 200 free – 1:47.87
- 50 back – 20.87
- 100 back – 45.60
- 200 back – 1:51.61
- 100 breast – 52.51
- 200 breast – 2:03.96
- 100 fly – 47.40
- 200 fly – 1:58.36
- 200 IM – 1:52.59
His time in the 100 back and 100 breaststroke, which were both done as just a sophomore in high school, are already fast enough to qualify for the NCAA Championships based on last year’s invite times. His best time in the 100 back would have placed 21st at last year’s Division I National Championship meet, and 20th in the 100 breaststroke.
Grimm’s list of accomplishments is long, but includes 4 NCSA Junior National titles in March (50 breast, 100 breast, 50 fly, 100 back); the 2019 Virginia 6A state championship in the 50 free; and the 2018 Virginia 6A state championship in the 100 back. His Oakton High School team won the 6A State Championship meet last season behind Grimm’s efforts.
Another University of Texas star, John Shebat, also attended Oakton High School. That school’s coach Parker Ramsdell is a Texas alumnus.
If you have a commitment to report, please send an email with a photo (landscape, or horizontal, looks best) and a quote to [email protected].
About the Fitter and Faster Swim Tour
The Fitter & Faster Swim Tour produces swim clinics featuring elite stars of the sport and the most innovative teaching platforms. FFT Swim Clinics can be customized to meet age and skill level of every team and community. Call 786-837-6880 or visit http://www.fitterandfaster.com/ to learn more.
FFT SOCIAL
Instagram – @fitterandfasterswimtour
Facebook – @fitterandfastertour
Twitter – @fitterandfaster
FFT is a SwimSwam partner.
wpDiscuz
Am I reading it wrong, 19.6 in the 50 but 47.5 in the 100?
Considering his 100 Back is a 45.60, his 100 free is an old time. Just has to swim it again, bet the kid can pull an easy 43 or below.
Yup. It says on collegeswimming his fastest 100 free is from Dec 2017.
Seems odd to me too – voted up
Dec. ’17 is the last time he swam 100 free short course.
He went a 47-high 100 IM at Spring NCSA’s, but got DQ’d. Also lost a 46-mid 100 fly to a DQ at the same meet.
The dude goes for an all or nothing reaction time off of each start by trying to anticipate when the ref will say go. When it works it gets him a little bit off the start, but not worth it for his super high DQ percentage if you ask me. Its not like he needs the tenths
Great strategy in the 50
Not so much in the 200
More than likely because he didn’t surface in time.
More and more talent coming from the DMV. This is why the Trident is gonna have the biggest US Market
Hey man dont forget about good ol PA. Right up there as a top swim state in the region, particularly Philly.
PA is great but it also benefits from some of the big meets covering a fairly big geographic region. The concentration of talent in the DMV in a small geographic footprint is crazy.
Hook ‘em!
Hook em!
The real Desorbo Effect!
Did he even visit UVA? I know he visited Texas back in early September, and Cal this past weekend.
He did visit UVA
And Bama
Don’t make too much of this in terms of it being a blow for UVa. He’s a top line in state recruit, but a plain truth is a lot of us don’t want to attend college local to where we grew up. I didn’t & many of my friends didn’t want that either. College is a shot to get somewhere new & different in addition to being a chance as a recruiter athlete to choose the ideal mix of a strong academic & social place (Texas is that) + to choose the sports environment.
Nobody has ever gone wrong saying they want to swim for Eddie Reese. He’s unquestionably the greatest living coach in this sport & he’s also IMHO… Read more »
KEKW
they are referencing a comment in a previous article where @DeSorbo Effect said they were gonna get Anthony Grimm, Josh Matheny, and David Curtiss, none of which committed to UVA. Gotta keep up with these juicy comment sections man!
I don’t think any program has a deck that looks like that in a recruiting class anymore. Back in the day for a run in the 1980s the #1-#5 recruits went to Stanford. Period. One year their recruits in one class were headed with John Moffet, Pablo Morales & Jeff Kostoff. Crazy.
Certainly Reese & Durden have continued to yield great classes, but it’s simply too spread out, too many well funded programs now to corner a market. Let’s also remember that development is a huge factor. The surge of NC State has been more about guys getting faster after they arrived moreso than the recruiting yield (although that seems to be changing now with NCS getting more of the… Read more »
What’s interesting to me is that we don’t see more of these top 5 recruits choosing, or even visiting (as far as we can tell on their social media), Louisville. As we just reported – Arthur Albiero is getting paid and currently has the top co-ed program in the country (both men and women were 4th at NCAAs last year). And yet, all of the recruiting momentum in the ACC is with NC State and Virginia.
Maybe all of that social media stuff those programs do, that everyone whines about, is working??
Not on the same level academically these three schools, it is sort of crazy for most kids not to choose the best (possible) academic schools first.
Virginia, Cal, and Texas (which I assume we’re his top three) are all top tier public schools. Not everyone can be Dean Farris, both a Godking and a Harvard… person.
ALL HAIL DEAN!
Harvard vastly drops their admission standards for athletes. Most of those kids couldn’t get into selective public colleges without the coach’s help, let alone Harvard. Idk anything about Dean, but from the kids I do know swimming there, it takes very little beyond being mediocre to get into Harvard with a coach’s recommendation.
If you aren’t trying to get an interview out of college with Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, or BCG or get in to Harvard Law, does it really matter where you go to undergrad from a purely educational perspective? Isn’t it more about going a place that aligns with the student’s desire to find a community? High achieving students, for example, want to go some place where they have the best chance to find peers who share those values. For swimmers, you know who most of your community is going to be based on the time commitments of being a Power 5 athlete. So, shouldn’t they pick based on that community and its culture?
Having a certain academic pedigree helps for post-graduate job placement or even post-graduate education and surely is a factor in making a decision for most people, there is no doubt about that.
Louisville men were 5th. But yes they were the top combined program last year.
It’s a great question Braden and I think you may have partially answered it in a previous thread (maybe the Garret Boone one). Despite their investment in sports, I think UL (rightly or wrongly) is still overcoming its historical commuter-school status from an academic lens. It isn’t viewed (even if it should be) as one of those major flagship state universities with strong funding you mentioned previously. For example, UL is just in a whole different tier in the US News ranking when compared with places like Alabama. It just isn’t viewed as a major research institution and is more akin to an East Carolina in perception. The SEC schools overcome the traditional academic perception by building up Honors Colleges… Read more »
I think Swim Parent is partially correct. US News and World Rankings are not a reliable indicator of the quality of education you can get at a university. There are many problems with the metrics they use (e.g., using “peer” opinions of your school as a large metric). But the bottom line is parents pay attention. In 2020, Cal was 22, UVA was 28, Texas was 48, and Louisville was 192. Until we get over academic snobbery these rankings will matter, particularly to American parents.
Braden Keith to be fair, for the recruiting class in question I wouldn’t say there is much more momentum for the UVA men than there is for Louisville so far….
And also Louisville men were not 4th at NCAAs last year…..
NC State has 4th locked down, 4 straight years, pretty impressive.
The men were not 4th last year. Their women will drop off this year too after Comerford left.
Moffett and Pablo were not in the same class…
I was off by a year on Moffet. I believe the class I referenced was headed by Morales, Kostoff & David Louden. Some other notables I think (not sure) in that same class were John Hodge & Matt Nance, a.k.a. Fat Chance.
For about 1/2 a decade Stanford men’s swimming enjoyed an embarrassment of riches unlike most all else.
The Peirsol-Hansen-Crocker relay was a single class, no? Talking about great classes..
That class was to my memory likely the closest thing to a US Olympic relay on the same NCAA team. With Stanford at one time you had this medley relay, 1986,
Back: Sean Murphy, Canadian Olympian
Breast: John Moffet
Fly: Pablo Morales
Free: David Lundberg
Not too shabby.
Same with Grevers, Bubolz and Alexandrov for NW correct?
Desorboeffect… whoever has that name has no affiliation with the program (swimmer, coach, alum or fan) I promise you. He/She, is a troll and more than likely has affiliations with another program and is only trying to give UVA a bad name.
Boom! Hook ‘em!
Really fun to watch him swim, sick underwater’s. Good luck Anthony.
@DeSorbo Effect, who’s gonna tell him?