The Arizona women are losing a 4th transfer of the off-season, as Sarah Denninghoff made it official today that she too would be moving on prior to next season. She has not yet committed formally to another school, but sources close to the situation have cited BYU and Florida as two of the programs in play.
Denninghoff has 11 All-American awards to her credit in two seasons with the Wildcats, and was the backstroker on both of Arizona’s silver-medal-earning medley relays at last year’s NCAA Championships. Her biggest value is as an elite backstroker, as she finished 4th in the 100 back at the 2012 NCAA Championships with a 51.62 (she was a bit better with a 51.33 in the prelims). She also took 4th in the 200 backstroke last season for a total of 30 individual points.
In the shorter medley relay, Denninghoff’s 24.20 leadoff split in the finals was slower only than Cindy Tran of Cal and Paige Miller of Texas A&M. She’s also an outstanding freestyler, and though she didn’t have her best swim on the 800 free relay last season, her best flat-start time of 1:45.63 would put her on any relay in the country next season (except for maybe Georgia).
Worst-case, whoever picks her up will get a two individual/five relay swimmer who can make a 40+ point difference at NCAA’s; best-case that number is closer to 60.
Arizona has now lost both their A and B medley relay backstrokers to transfer this summer, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be left totally high-and-dry. Megan Lafferty, an All-American transfer from Maryland, will be able to slide into the butterfly leg of this medley relay and allow 51-second backstroker Lauren Smart to shift to the backstroke leg. If for some reason that doesn’t work out, Margo Geer is a more-than-servicable backstroker as well, and could jump there and put yet another big transfer Amanda Kendall on the freestyle anchor. The Wildcats still have plenty of options for those relays
Neither of those are long-term solutions (Lafferty, Smart and Kendall all have just one season of eligibility left), but it should allow the Wildcats to maintain their high rankings next season while they develop other young talent to fill those roles. That includes swimmers like 53-backstroker Bonnie Brandon and 54-butterflier Leticia Lelli, both coming in as freshmen next season.
An interesting sidebar: with the class that Cal has coming in, if everything continues to develop, they could probably occupy at least 6 lanes of the Pac-12 A-final in the 100 back next season if they wanted to.
this would be great for florida since their sprints are thin especially after losing sara bateman. Also she would be a great option for backstroke on both relays since Beisel isn’t as good in the shorter backstrokes. Even without her florida’s backstroke group will be great with Sinead, Besiel, Regan, and two sub 2:00 200 backstrokers recruits
Hmm- what if she followed hite to Wisconsin? If she went to florida their backstroke group would be intense with beisel and sinead Russell.
Maybe Hansen is doing something right? Sometimes when you do things right, you drive people away.
Or, maybe everyone involved thinks they are doing the best they can for themselves and the program, and certain swimmers don’t see eye to eye with the coaches.
Also, sometimes transferring amounts to an athlete wanting to be closer to a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes a student-athlete had a party foul so bad that they need to skip town. Or, a coach said something so hurtful, intentionally or otherwise, that an athlete can’t put it in the past.
There are so many reasons why things happen. Maybe SwimSwam should interview the athletes in question?
Arizona women will become what the Wisconsin men’s team became under Hansen. A very good team for 3 years, that turns into mid level team.
Wow big time loss for Arizona! Eric Hansen must be doing something wrong over there