Nationwide, the recruiting class of 2012 is not all that deep in breaststrokers. One of the best available, however, is Romy Landeck out of the First Colony Swim Team in suburban Houston. Yesterday, via Twitter, Landeck announced that she would be headed about two hours north to College Station to swim for the Texas A&M Aggies.
Landeck has Olympic Trials cuts in both the 100 and 200 breaststrokes, with yards bets of 1:01.93/2:12.35. Those times put her within striking distance of NCAA points in both events. She’s just about a second away in either from last year’s B final, but in the very tightly-packed breaststroke fields, there’s a lot that can happen.
A&M coach Steve Bultman has sort of quietly built himself into a very good breaststroke coach the past few years, which is not how his reputation was originally built prior to that with freestylers (Christine Marshall), backstrokers (Kristen Heiss), everything-but-breaststrokers (like Julia Wilkinson) and butterfliers (like Triin Aljand) who have all made international impacts. But after Alia Atkinson took the NCAA title in the 200 in 2010, and sophomore-to-be Breeja Larson took double-silver last spring, he’s now got the credentials to attract top breaststrokers like Landeck as well. We all know what Larson did last year; her meteoric rise was well-documented. Does that mean that Landeck will show the same improvements as a freshman? No, of course not. But she does come in a bit better than Larson was, so you have to like her chances to conribute points at some point in her career.
Landeck also flashed some IM skills over the summer with a 2:19.04 (LCM) at Junior Nationals to earn a 3rd Trials cut.
