Fall is around the corner, and while for many it signals the return of certain pumpkin-spiced items to stores and the return of football (American) at the Pop-Warner level to the professional level, at SwimSwam, it means the start of the 2024-2025 NCAA Swimming and Diving season. The 2024 recruits have all landed and started their careers as collegiate student-athletes (or most of them; UCLA doesn’t start classes until the 23rd of September, to name one).
That said, we have been working our way through the rankings of the top recruits, the top recruiting classes, and the top 12 programs for both genders, all of which can be easily accessed here in his compendium of sorts (SAT Vocab Word!/ do they still emphasis these? I’m so old that my SAT was out of 2400)
Top 12 Programs Preview
| Women’s Top 12 | Men’s Top 12 | |||||
| Program | 2024 NCAA Score | Stars (★) | Program | 2024 NCAA Score | Stars (★) | |
| Virginia | 527.5 | 1 | Arizona State | 523.5 | ||
| Texas | 441 | 2 | Cal | 444.5 | ||
| Florida | 364 | 28.5 | 3 | Florida | 378 | |
| Tennessee | 277 | 26.5 | 4 | Indiana | 376 | 33 |
| Stanford | 250 | 29 | 5 | NC State | 318 | 27.5 |
| Louisville | 212 | 20 | 6 | Tennessee | 231 | 17 |
| Indiana | 206 | 25 | 7 | Texas | 189 | 26.5 |
| Southern Cal | 200 | 22 | 8 | Stanford | 177 | 23.5 |
| Ohio State/NC State | 162 | 20/22.5 | 9 | Virginia Tech | 172 | 19.5 |
| 10 | Notre Dame | 132 | N/A | |||
| Cal | 153 | 21 | 11 | Georgia | 116 | 20 |
| Michigan | 147.5 | 20 | 12 | Auburn | 100 | 17 |
GRADING CRITERIA
Over the years, we’ve gone back and forth on how to project points, ranging from largely subjective rankings to more data-based grading criteria based on ‘projected returning points.’ We like being as objective as possible, but we’re going to stick with the approach we’ve adopted post-Covid. The “stars” will rely heavily on what swimmers actually did last year, but we’ll also give credit to returning swimmers or freshmen who have posted times that would have scored last year.
Since we only profile the top 12 teams in this format, our grades are designed with that range in mind. In the grand scheme of college swimming and compared to all other college programs, top 12 NCAA programs would pretty much all grade well across the board. But in the interest of making these previews informative, our grading scale is tough – designed to show the tiers between the good stroke groups, the great ones, and the 2015 Texas fly group types.
- 5 star (★★★★★) – a rare, elite NCAA group projected to score 25+ points per event
- 4 star (★★★★) – a very, very good NCAA group projected to score 15-24 points per event
- 3 star (★★★) – a good NCAA group projected to score 5-14 points per event
- 2 star (★★) – a solid NCAA group projected to score 1-4 points per event
- 1 star (★) – an NCAA group that is projected to score no points per event, though that doesn’t mean it’s without potential scorers – they’ll just need to leapfrog some swimmers ahead of them to do it
We’ll grade each event discipline: sprint free (which we define to include all the relay-distance freestyle events, so 50, 100 and 200), distance free, IM, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly and diving. Use these grades as a jumping-off point for discussion, rather than a reason to be angry.
Also, keep in mind that we are publishing many of these previews before teams have posted finalized rosters. We’re making our assessments based on the best information we have available at the time of publication, but we reserve the right to make changes after publication based on any new information that may emerge regarding rosters. If that does happen, we’ll make certain to note the change.
Top Recruiting Classes
| Women’s | Men’s | |
| Virginia, NC State, Texas, Tennessee | 1-4 | Texas, Indiana, Harvard, Virginia |
| Stanford, Louisville, Cal, Wisconsin | 5-8 | NC State, Florida, Cal, ASU |
| OSU, Michigan, Florida, Indiana | 9-12 | Louisville, Tennessee, UNC, OSU |
| Northwestern, Auburn, Virginia Tech, Georgia | 13-16 | USC, Texas A&M, West Point, Minnesota |
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Honorable Mentions (In No Particular Order)
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Michigan, Georgia, Yale, Princeton |
- The rankings listed are based on our Class of 2024 Re-Rank. “HM” refers to our honorable mentions and “BOTR” refers to our Best of the Rest section for top-tier recruits.
- Like most of our rankings, these placements are subjective. We base our team ranks on several factors: prospects’ incoming times are by far the main factor, but we also consider potential upside in the class, class size, relay impact, and team needs. Greater weight is placed on known success in short course yards, so foreign swimmers are slightly devalued based on the difficulty in converting long course times to short course production.
- Transfers are included, though they are weighed less than recruits who arrive with four seasons of eligibility.
- For the full list of all verbally committed athletes, click here. A big thank you to SwimSwam’s own Anne Lepesant for compiling that index – without it, rankings like these would be far less comprehensive.
- Some teams had not released a finalized 2024-25 team roster at the time these articles were published, meaning it’s possible we missed some names.
Individual Recruit Ranks
Girls
Boys
