With yesterday’s beginning of the early-signing period, colleges will begin to release official lists of their “signed” athletes, rather than having to rely on the athletes contacting us. The Cal women were the first big program to release their full class roster, seen here.
Most of the swimmers on the list we knew about. Liz Pelton and Rachel Bootsma are the best among a super-elite class. Lauren Driscoll, Rachael Acker and Kelly Naze are also amongst the top 15-or-so recruits in the country.
There was one new face on the list, however, and that’s Alicia Grima out of the Stanford-connected Palo Alto program – the same one that produced Acker.
Is Grima as good as, say, Pelton and Bootsma? No, but few are. With the quality of swimmer in this class (both for Cal and nation-wide), we must fight to maintain perspective on recruits. Grima brings a huge depth of versatility, and still falls into the category of swimmers who could score at NCAA’s as a freshman.
Based on that versatility, Grima is a fantastic 200 IM’er, with a best of 2:00.26. She is strong through all 4 strokes, with bests of:
100 back –55.81
200 back –1:59.08
100 fly –55.43
200 fly –2:03.95
Grima almost reminds you a bit of 2011 Cal recruit Catherine Breed, only with better IM’s and not quite as good on the freestyles. Not that Grima isn’t a very good freestyler – she’s got bests of 1:49.29 in the 200 and 4:51.0 in the 500.
It’s hard to say what Grima’s focus events will be in college. She’s surely going to be a 200 IM’er. After that, the door is wide-open. Cal is going to be in a position with the depth of this class and the last few where a lot of swimmers could be swimming events other than their best. Grima might be best suited as a 100-200 backstroker to go along with her IM race, but in terms of Cal backstrokers (though there’s a lot of development to come in the next few years), she currently sits maybe 6th or 7th.
Either way, Teri McKeever is taking the approach that if she gets enough of these phenomenal swimmers in the program, the events will work themselves out. If that means she’s got 6 scorers in the backstroke races and only 1 in the breaststroke events, then so-be-it. It only takes 1 of each to make a relay anyways, and after that all individual events score the same number of points.
Diver
Cal also has a new secret-weapon on the horizon – a potential diver. Annie Kastler out of Bethesda, Maryland is a very good diver and a future NCAA scorer on the 3-meter, at least. In that event, she placed 9th at Junior Nationals, to go with a 13th-place on the platform. If Kastler pans out at the college level, this would be a huge ace for the Golden Bears.
I’m not a specialist of NCAA, but as a swimming fan here from France, I think the list of Cal’s recruits is the best in history of women’s swimming.You have two of the best backstrokers in USA with Rachel Bootsma and Elizabeth Pelton, you have one of the most promising talents in freestyle events with Lauren Driscoll and you have a super young swimmer in butterfly with Kelly Naze. I have noticed that Kelly Naze isn’t anymore in Colorado Stars. Imagine that group of swimmers. Except USC, I don’t see a team to beat Cal in the next years. Ok except Caitlin Leverenz they don’t have another big breaststroker, but it’s not a problem. The big question now is :… Read more »
Hard to argue with you that this is the best class…ever…? Certainly is in sort of the “modern information era”. They could likely put together 5 freshman relays at NCAA’s that would make A finals. At least.
Missy has specifically named Cal and Georgia. I wouldn’t count the Bulldogs out – she’s got a Colorado Stars teammate in Athens too, and traveled with quite a few Bulldogs on her recent trip to the World Cup. I’d go so far as to say that I think Georgia is actually a front-runner.
Time will only tell, though. I know for a fact that she’s far from made up her mind.