The bomb I did not expect upon my inbox on a Monday morning before the Big 12 Championships begin: “Is Carson Foster swimming??”
Around 9AM, my phone blew up with the declaration that World Champion Carson Foster would be swimming at this week’s Big 12 Championships, but it turned out to be a false alarm, according to Foster, who says he is not eligible to swim collegiately anymore.
“One last dance with (Jake Foster),” the post read on Instagram, with the two brothers smiling on a pool deck at the Greensboro Aquatic Center.
SwimSwam reached out to people in Foster’s camp to confirm, because swimmers have been known to leave opaque messages about their futures in the sport, and it’s good we did. The camp confirmed Carson’s NCAA career is over and that neither brother was swimming at the Westmont Pro Swim Series stop the following week either.
The news was not hard to believe – Jake Foster was supposed to be done with his Texas Longhorn career too, initially opting to skip his 5th year of eligibility to focus on Olympic training before matriculating to medical school. Then he showed up at a dual meet in January and swam an NCAA season-leading time.
Carson, meanwhile, is a few weeks off an appearance at the World Championships as part of an abbreviated American team. There he took silver in the 200 IM, bronze in the men’s 400 free relay, and bronze in the men’s 800 free relay. He also placed 4th in the 400 IM.
His brother Jake took gold medals via prelims legs on the men’s 400 medley and mixed 400 medley relays.
Carson would have provided a huge boost to the Longhorns, who via graduations, transfers, Olympic redshirts, and retirements are left thinner-than-normal this year. At last year’s NCAA Championship meet, they were 3rd – snapping a nine-year streak of finishing in the top two. Foster was the team’s second-leading scorer with 42 points. Along with their top scorer David Johnston (43 points) and the graduated Caspar Corbeau, the Longhorns lost three of their top four from NCAAs last season, who combined for 120 points.
The Longhorns are still expected to dominate the Big 12 Championships, which begin Tuesday in Morgantown, West Virginia. All Big 12 students are admitted free with a student ID.
This is just setting up the announcement of Brooks Curry competing next week at the Pac-12s as a Bear.
Can you blame him? He just got back from Asia.
Carson gagging everyone on a Monday morning is insane but iconic behavior
Olympian Carson Foster??? When?
Thanks for clarifying, Braden. Still odd/provocative wording in that caption. Wonder what it could mean
Sounds like it’s just a Mizuno ad. Nothing more, nothing less haha.
about a month early for april fool’s jokes…
Nice shot!
your a capper
I mean it’s entirely possible that his people are lying. It’s happened before.
But it would be weird for him to announce on IG that he’s swimming at Big 12s and then to have his reps immediately follow it up by denying it.
A few years back, Caeleb said he was swimming the 800 free relay at NCAAs, but it wasn’t true. Which sort of jives with Caeleb. Doesn’t seem like Carson’s move to lie.
His reps are cappers
And Carson has just confirmed he’s no longer eligible to swim in college, so that wraps it up and puts a bow on it.
Braden- he does have a fifth year b/c of Covid as well as one year traditional eligibility- maybe something happened when he turned pro? …in this day and age of NIL, is there any difference between a pro and college athlete in terms of being compensated?
Perhaps he is not registered for enough classes at UT? Oh yeah, the student part of student-athlete.
Whats a capper?
liar
Cap = lie