Over the next few weeks, as the Long Course season closes out, new freshman are arriving on campus, and fans everywhere ramp up for another exciting NCAA Season, we will be running a team-by-team preview of the upcoming NCAA season. Starting with the no.12 teams and finishing with the defending National Championships (Texas men and Florida women) we will work our way down the top finishers from last year’s NCAA teams, and will also jump into some rising teams that we expect to break into the top tier this season. Click here to see the other men’s previews, and click here to see all of the previews for both Men and Women.
Key Losses: Tyler Clary (51 NCAA points, 4 relays), Chris Brady (6 NCAA points, 4 relays), Andre Schultz (32 NCAA Points, 1 relay), Charlie Houchin (4 NCAA Points, 1 relay), Sam Hoekstra (1 NCAA relay), Alon Mandel (2 NCAA relays)
Key Additions: Kyle Whitaker (IM/Free/Fly/Breast), John Wojciechowski (Fly), Sean Ryan (Distance Free), Ryu Kamiya (back/free), Kyle Duckitt (breaststroke)
New Directions: Hopefully, when he was filling out his budget for the 2010-2011 NCAA Season, Michigan coach Mike Bottom included an allowance for name-tags and campus maps. This year’s Michigan squad will be almost unrecognizable compared to last year’s. The roster is so overhauled, in fact, that it’s hardly worth discussing at any length what happened last season, beyond mentioning that the Wolverines were 7th at NCAA’s, about 70 points behind 6th place Auburn.
Michigan brings in 20 new athletes, including divers, which makes up nearly half of its 42-man roster. They graduated, or lost to the lures of professional swimming, 93 NCAA individual points and a 13 out of 20 total NCAA relay spots.
In Search of Leaders: The biggest returning name on the roster is junior Dan Medwed. Madwed was 5th at NCAA’s in the 500 free and 200 fly, as well as 12th in the 200 free. He is joined by Hassan Abdel Khalik, who was second after the prelims of the 500 free after posting a 4:15.37 as a freshman last year. He broke his hand coming into the finish, and had to push start in the 500, resulting in him adding 40 seconds in finals and coming in 8th place. He then had to drop the rest of his events from the meet, which was quite disappointing. Luckily, he has 3 more years to come back and score big points for the Wolverines.
Michigan loses their top 3 backstrokers, Alon Mandel, Tyler Clary, and Andre Schultz. This means that their fastest returning swimmer in that stroke is Connor McCarroll, who only goes a 48.9/1:45.9 in the backstroke events. While these times are not “slow” per se, they are not what one would expect from a program like Michigan. Their fastest returning butterflier is also their fastest returning breaststroker, Neal Kennedy. There are going to be lots of opportunities for freshmen to score on medley relays.
Biggest (and probably only) Area of Depth:The Wolverines will be absolutely loaded with depth in the breaststroke events this season. They return their top 6 swimmers in the 100 and top 3 in the 200. The top 4 100 breaststrokers, Neal Kennedy (54.33), James Ridgeway (54.34), Jared Miller (54.42) and Sam Wensman (55.26) are all seniors, in fact. With four veteran swimmers that tightly bunched together, there will be some incredible competition for the breaststroke spots next year, which one can only assume will push one of them down into the 53 second range it will take to score points at NCAA’s.
Michigan definitely needs to find some depth this season, as last year they only had one relay finish in the top 11 at Nationals. To make things worse, out of that relay, the 800 free, only Madwed returns.
So Many Choices…:With such a huge class of freshmen, it would be extremely time-consuming to note every single one, so I’ve picked out some of the real stars of the class. Note that there are certainly many other swimmers in this group who have the big-time potential to do great things at Michigan.
Such Little Times!: The loss of Tyler Clary was a big blow to the Michigan program. He had a legitimate shot in his senior season to be a triple NCAA winner, which is an almost unheard of feat with the level of competition that exists today. If anybody could replace Clary, however, it’s Kyle Whitaker from Indiana. It would have been awesome to see those two train together for a season, but Whitaker will be just fine on his own.
In high school, Whitaker broke the National High School Record in the 200 IM with a 1:45.25 as a junior. Of course, this was in 2009, when every record in sight was being broken by a rubber-clad swimmer. But then, in 2010, Whitaker came back and broke his own mark by 7 tenths of a second. That is an impressively huge drop that shows that Whitaker still has a lot of room to improve, even with the times he’s already posted. Is Whitaker good enough to make 2011 the second straight year where the 200 IM NCAA Champ is a freshman (last year, Austin Surhoff of Texas won)? Probably not. But considering that he’s only another 7 tenths off of last year’s A-final time, I think he should definitely expect double digit points in the event. And he’s even better in the 400 IM, where his 2010 best of 3:43.73 would have put him into the A-final at NCAA’s.
Whitaker also has Olympic Trials cuts in the 100 breast (54.86 SCY) and 200 fly (1:44.56 SCY). His 200 free time is a 1:36.1. He’s gone a 20.4 flat-start (converted) in the 50 free, and a 4:19.79 in the 500. While backstroke is his weakest stroke, he still has enough pure talent to knock out a 22.6 in the 50 and a 50.8 in the 100 (converted). Suffice it to say, Whitaker is one of the most developed and versatile swimmers that we have seen coming out of high school in a very long time. While he’s not going to win 3 events as a freshman, he will certainly help dull the loss of Clary in a big way.
John (Jacob?) Wojingleheimerchowski…:Another big domestic get for the Wolverines is John Wojciechowski, who is a stud butterflier out of Arizona. He had the top USA-Swimming time in the 100 fly (47.52) for 17 year olds last season. That also means he’ll come into the season with the second fastest time on the Michigan roster, and at the very least will give Michigan some flexibility in their medley relays, given that the butterflier ahead of him, Kennedy, is also the team’s best breaststroker.
Wojciechowski has also gone a 1:47.2 in his 200 fly. Depending on his development, he could score in either fly distance as a freshman, but will almost definitely do so as a sophomore.
His Name is My Name Too: Sean Ryan, from Tennessee, is a distance superstar in the making. When most Tennesseans hear the name Sean Ryan, they probably thing of the tight end who plays for the Titans of the NFL. While Ryan may never surpass a pro football player in popularity, he certainly has the potential to become the second most famous Sean Ryan in his home state.
In 2009, at only 16 years old, Ryan qualified for the World Championships in Rome as part of the US Open Water team, and finished 11th in the 25k. Comparatively, the mile is a veritable sprint for Ryan, but he finished the 2010 LC season with the 10th best time in the world in the 1500m. His 15:04 converts to a 14:33 mile, which would have won NCAA’s last year. All indicators are that he’s better long course than short course (which is probably a result of his open water training), but he is still another immediate scorer for Michigan. He also extends some great times down as far as the 200 (1:37.8) and 500 (4:21.1). Ryan is world-class before setting foot on campus, and will be huge following in the footsteps of the likes of Peter Vanderkaay NCAA mile record-holder Chris Thompson in Ann Arbor.
Heading West: Bottom and the Wolverines also brought in two of the top international recruits in Ryu Kamiya of Japan and Kyle Duckitt from South Africa.
Kamiya is a backstroker and a freestyler. In the backstroke events, he has yards times (converted from SC meters) of 44.1 and 1:36.7 in the 100 and 200 frees. He also has a 49.3 in the 100 back and a 1:44.0 in the 200 back. He should provide some relief in the backstroke events, and also add a lot of strength to the Michigan free relays. He comes to Michigan from St. Mary’s International School in Japan, which is the same place that Michigan sprint standout sophomore Miguel Ortiz went to school.
Duckitt is a South African National Team member, and will add to the considerable depth of the breaststroking group. Although he might only be the 5th or 6th best breaststroker this year, note above that the top 4 will all graduate after this season, so Duckitt projects to be a major player down the road. He has gone a 55-low converted from short-course meters.
Free-Falling: Last season, Michigan had to rely on senior sprinter Sam Hoekstra to fill out their diving lineup in their dual meet against Ohio State. He competed admirably in successfully completing both the 1-meter and 3-meter competitions, but finished in last place…by a lot.
Finding divers to fill up scoring spots will not be a problem this year. Michigan brought in a new diving coach, KZ Li, this season. Li has an enormous resume that include stops at many of the world’s top diving clubs. He led the National Training Centre of Diving in Melbourne, Australia from 2006-2008. He has served as the head diving coach at Texas Aquatics and Team Orlando. He was a two-time Big Ten Diving Coach of the Year at Minnesota; in a conference that is renowned as one of the top diving conferences in the country.
So it is no surprise that Michigan brought in a whopping six diving recruits this season. That leaves them with 8 divers on the roster, which is without a doubt one of the biggest diving groups in the nation. While none of them are home-runs for the Wolverines, the class includes plenty of guys who, under Li’s capable tutelage, will at worst help Michigan on the dual-meet and Big Ten Championship level. At best, they will develop into NCAA scorers. Either way, they set a solid foundation for Michigan to rebuild a diving program that has not given them much help since Jason Coben graduated in 2004.
2011 Outlook: This is one of the most difficult teams to peg for this season. They will probably have more reliance on freshman and sophomores than any other top 10 team. But those freshman and sophomores are really, really good. They have probably the top incoming class in the nation, based on quality at the top and the depth. Look out for the future, as this class will lead Michigan back to the top of the nation. I think the rest of the country is too good for them to break into the top 4 with so much youth, but they will definitely be an exciting team to watch develop.
Thanks guys for your feedback. I actually meant to save this as a draft last night and post it this morning, after a final read-through. Should be all fixed now.
You say that Alon Mandel is a key loss and then a paragraph later, a key returner?
Abdel-Khalik broke his hand in the 500 prelims last year. Started finals in the water so he didn’t dislocate the bone, but he could still get 8th-place points. Had to drop the 200 and whatever his third event was (100 or mile I guess). He’ll be back. I think he could push for the 500 win.