U Sports All-Stars vs. BUCS All-Star Team
- July 3-4, 2025
- Loughborough University, Loughborough, England
- Long Course Meters (50 meters)
- Race Videos
- Meet Results (photos of paper results)
Over the weekend, a cross-continental Commonwealth clash was held in Loughborough, England, on Thursday and Friday between an all-start team from the Canadian collegiate U Sports collegiate league the British BUCS collegiate league.
Note: the events, which allowed each country to enter four swimmers in each event, were split into two heats of four swimmers each, which allowed lanes 7 and 8 to be used for warm-up and cool down.
The Canadian team ultimately dominated the scoring, in spite of the Brits having home pool advantage.
Final Team Standings
- Women: U Sports Canada 144 – British BUCS 119
- Men: U Sports Canada 181 – British BUCS 83
Among the winners for the Canadian side is Andrew Herman from the University of Toronto in the men’s 50 backstroke. He won in 25.47, taking almost three-tenths off his previous personal best.
The U Sports bronze medalist in this event, Herman is the son of 1988 Canadian Olympian Mojca Carter, who finished 9th at that meet in the 200 fly.
That was part of a Canadian effort that saw them finish 1-2 in four of the seven men’s individual events on day 1. Also on that list was UBC’s Joel Blanco and Laurier’s Kent Goni-Avila. Blanco swam 50.67 and Goni-Avila swam 50.73, best times for both swimmers.
Goni-Avila, notably, was only 22nd at the U Sports Championships in this event in short course meters.
“This has turned out to be a fantastic initiative for our Canadian team”, said team head coach. Byron MacDonald who is the head coach at the University of Toronto. ” so many of the swimmers had lifetime bests or seasonal bests and they are truly having a lot of fun this week.”
On the women’s side, the U Sports team snagged a win in the 50 free when Dutch-born Zea Wetzlaugh won in 25.96. That’s her first career swim under 26 seconds, with her previous best coming three weeks later in 26.12. In total, she’s dropped over a second in this event in 2025.
Wetzlaugh swims for Western University Swimming.
The British contingent did have some bright spots, especially in the rest of the women’s freestyle events. Harriet Rogers from Loughborough and Jessica Podger from Bath University went 1-2 in the women’s 100 free in times of 56.55 and 57.08, respectively.
Podger also won the 200 free (2:01.78) and 400 free (4:20.50).
Leah Crisp from BUCS won the 800 free in 8:55.04.
Sienna Robinson swam 1:08.41 in the 100 meter breaststroke, just half-a-second shy of her best time in the event. She is the BUCS Champion in that event, and that swim is the second-best of her career.
Assuming a lot of GB’s eligible big names – those who won at BUCS- are going to Worlds, so not swimming this meet.
Yes they agreed to no World Championship or World University Games swimmers, in order to ensure that those swimmers were focused on that meet. Both sides.
Canada invited the top eligible swimmer(s) in each event until they found takers and had a team. Britain put out more of a “who’s interested?” open call and chose the best team they could out of those. Everything was self funded, though at least from Canada’s side, schools ponied up some money to help offset costs for their athletes.
I would suspect that in general, the top of the best BUCS team is stronger (most top Canadians train outside of Canada), but that the U Sports system is deeper. The scoring system, though, was… Read more »
The U Sport system is deeper and I suspect will continue in that direction in the years to come!
Good opportunity for some good swimmers to aim towards and they get to represent their country.Can be improved on for sure but that’s fine.And always good to have exposure to Byron Macdonald,one of Canada,s best coaches.
Yeah, if it’s never more than just a fun way to re-engage swimmers, then great. We need more of that in swimming.
Had a handful of swimmers go best times, so there’s something to it. Sometimes just getting out of the grind is worth it.
Next round, if they can organize a little better and get a site going and get the live stream working, could be a hit!
What a fudging shambles this was.
What else did we expect with this Loughborough leadership
What makes you think that? I don’t know much about this event -I was busy watching European Juniors.
The initiative and idea is great and I hope they continue in the future, however, the execution seemed to leave a lot lacking. Not easy to find live results, I don’t think a live feed, not a lot of publicity, and lack of venue with separate 50m and cool down space all hampered this meet. I know it’s technically a dual meet but if you’re going to spend the length of time and sums of money to go through this ordeal, might as well make it as good as possible and market it.
Hope it continues and they improve on it!
Looked like a very poorly organised meet by Loughborough